More Medical Fun Stuff

Okay, so it's not really fun. In fact, I haven't had a whole lot of fun since my last chemo treatment on January 5. However, I do want to share what I've been going through since I think it may help others who are going through chemo.

When I first diagnosed and before I had even begun chemo, I asked my doctor about my activity level. I had a lot going on at the time (for instance, I was preparing to shoot a feature length film while also working a full-time job) and wanted to know to what I extend I could expect chemo to impact it.

My doctor told me at that time that each person is different and that I should really just gauge how I feel. He also mentioned that, in general, people who are active tend to do better on chemo than those who are not. He didn't define what he meant by "active."

Throughout all last summer, I continued working full-time and shooting my film. We shot on an average of two days per week. One day was usually on a weekend and the other day on the evening of a weekday. In addition, I spent some time each evening preparing for the next shoot. Throughout all of this, the only time I really felt the effects of the chemo were on the day of my treatment or one of the two days following my treatment. During that time, I really never felt nauseous; I only felt fatigue. I could feel the chemo in my system. It left a strange sensation that I experienced both physically and mentally. I don't know how to describe it beyond that. But that seemed to be the extent of its effect on me.

Since that time, I've also had surgery and radiation. Of the three, chemo is by far the worst. Even though I was fortunate enough to never get sick, it was still the hardest to deal with. So, when I decided to have two more rounds of chemo in the last month, it was not an easy decision. It would have been much easier to not get more. I knew it was going to wear me out and make me feel bad, but for some reason, this time, it was even harder on me than last summer.

My first chemo treatment was actually pretty good. I had a similar experience as I had remembered it last summer. The first day you receive chemo, it can be like an energy shot for some people (me included). They administer it with a steroid called decadron that can give some people an energy boost. I received my first chemo session (in the second round) on December 20. That night, I went to see a local improv comedy show with a friend, and I felt great.

The next two days, I felt like I was recovering from a week without sleep. I spent the next two days just resting. By the 24th, I felt about 90% and drove 3 hours to stay with family over the holidays. By Christmas day, I felt pretty normal. Even my appetite was normal.

Unlike last summer, I wasn't very busy over the holidays. Once I returned home from visiting my family, on December 26, I didn't do a whole lot. I didn't work and I didn't do a whole lot of physical activity. Mostly, I just stayed home and worked on my computer (or, more appropriately, surfed the web). I noticed that I wasn't eating as well as I had last summer either. For most of the summer, I ate relatively healthy. I focused my diet on consuming a lot of vegetables and when I ate meat, I tried to make it low-fat. However, I had gotten into some bad eating habits after my surgery and particularly through the holidays. When I got back on chemo in December, I really didn't alter my bad eating habits much.

Then, I had my second chemo on January 5. That seemed to change everything. For the first time, I had a really hard time recovering from that chemo. Usually, within 3 days of chemo, I'm back up to 90%. Within a week, I felt 99% normal, except that I got winded and tired more easily than I had prior to chemo. However, with this last round, I found that a full week after my chemo, I still felt awful. I was battling semi-nausea most of the time. My appetite was nearly gone. I ate just to keep from getting sick. I was exhausted all the time, and my inability to sleep at night just made it worse. And, just when I thought it should be getting better, I started experiencing new symptoms that had me concerned about my heart.

This past Sunday, I started experiencing chest pains... not in my heart but sort of down and to the left of my heart, along the outer left edge of my chest wall. The pains always seemed to accompany periods when my heart would start racing and I'd have a brief moment where I was short of breath. Of course, the first thing that concerned me was the effect the adriamycin (the chemo drug) was having on my heart. I already knew that a certain amount of adriamycin could pose a cardiac risk, but I also knew that I was supposed to be well below that threshold.

When the pain and racing heart didn't get any better, I called my doctor. That morning, when I first woke up, I took my resting heart rate. It was at 100 bpm before I ever got out of bed. When I called my doctor's office, they managed to schedule an EKG for me the same day. By the end of the day, I knew it wasn't my heart. The EKG came back clean. So, they asked me to have some blood drawn the next morning.

It turns out my blood counts are really, really low, so they scheduled a blood transfusion for me tomorrow. I don't know why, but I really don't want to have it. By yesterday, my symptoms started going away. Today, I actually feel pretty good. Before I have the transfusion tomorrow, I'm going to have them check my blood counts again. I don't want to go through this unless I absolutely have to. The nurses tell me that it won't make a difference, that it's extremely rare for someone's blood counts to just start rising again on their own. But, I'm a rare individual, so I'm going to check anyway.

So, I wanted to share that I think I am walking proof that the more active you are, the better you do on chemo. Instead of stopping all activity, maybe just slow it down a bit. If you were jogging three miles every day, you might want to slow it down to a brisk walk. Or you might want to only jog a mile. That's up to your body to tell you what it needs. But, my suggestion is that you don't immediately retreat to your bed or the couch and wait for it to pass you by. I think you will feel a lot better and have an easier time on chemo is you stay active. That was certainly my experience.