Chemo round 2

Chemo round 1 was given very slowly. Took about six hours. This was because they didn't know if I would have a reaction. Was told no reaction then I won't have a reaction during future treatments. I had no reaction and everyone was happy, until today.

Well, guess I just am determined not to do anything the way you are suppose to. About an hour into my cytoxan which is the chemo drug with the less likely hood of reaction, I decide to listen to the wonderful imagery, mediation pod cast that Helen sent me and I have on my iphone. Thank God I did. And Thank God for sending me those Helen because the first thing it tells you is to get comfortable and then take a deep breath. I take a deep breath and dear Lord it felt like I inhaled a lung full of smog and I coughed, so I took another one just in case and same thing. Ok now my chemo nurse watches my butt like crazy because two coughs and she is yelling from the nurses station are you ok? I said well when I breath deep it feels like I breathed in smog and I have to cough. She rushes over are you having tightness in you chest. I don't know. I don't know what that feels like what I'm having is the feeling when you breath in deep on a smoggy day and it makes you cough so yea ok I'm having tightness in my chest. She turns off the chemo and says I'm getting Nicole (that's my PA) so she shows up and she says what's going on with you. I go through the song and dance. She checks my oxygen level which is 99, 100 is highest so I'm getting oxygen then she listens to my lungs. She decides to leave the chemo off and see if I worsen or get better. Ok. Rachel my chemo nurse comes over she says ok we are leaving the chemo off for a bit but you are getting your full chemo today. You will get your treatment, the worse case here is that I will have to give you steroids to get this to stop and she looks very unhappy at this. So I say to her ok so what you are telling me is that you have a way around this and I'm getting my treatment today no matter what. She says yes. I say look I'm not panicking, I can breath, I'm good. Let's give this a chance to subside on its own. She says ok. 15 minutes later she comes back, how are you doing. I say its 90% gone, I have to breath really deep to feel it and its not making me cough. So she turns back on the chemo but really slow and tells me to let her know if I feel anything. Nope. An hour later she checks back and its completely gone now so she turns it up a bit more but not a lot. Finally, finally we get through that bag. Now on to the second chemo drug taxotere the one that is suppose to have more reactions to it. So this one, slowly administered too. I'm good. Nothing happened. We had gotten there at 10am so this happened at 11am. At 2pm I sent dad out to get food as I was hungry. We left at 4:45pm. Yep almost 7 hours later. And chemo nurse tells me next session you are going to want to pack a lunch which tells me this is how my next two sessions are going to go. I'm ok just going prepared, rather take 7 hours than have a reaction. Now the woman in the cubicle beside me had the same reaction. She had a different nurse, who asked her if she wanted to wait it out a bit and see what happened. She said no I want my Benedryl its what they gave me the last two times and it worked. Gee poor thing it must be bad because she was adamant that she wanted the Benedryl. nurse went to check with her doctor and I have to say came back with a syringe of Benedry for her.

So two more long days ahead of me. Its ok. I do get up and go to the bathroom and wonder around a bit. I know they don't want me wandering around much but 7 hours you just got to go look out the window or something.

Next up, the bowels. Making friends with Metamucil!

Schedule for the rest next three weeks:

Nuelstra shot tomorrow at 4pm. Not a bad shot so not dreading it. Will make time appt for next chemo which will be June 3rd.

I will be seeing Dr. Barth before my next chemo round. Rachel was very unhappy that I hadn't seen him but, he was off a couple of days last week. But, Rachel did confirm the rest of my test are in and he will want to talk to me about those. They are going to call me with an appointment. I'm going to give them until Tuesday to call me and then I'll start bugging them because I want the test results.

Asked about having to have a blood count done half way through this next round ( was told would most likely need that) nope. Doing so well and blood counts up high that I don't have to have an extra poke. They will set up the IV, draw the blood from that, double check the blood counts and then hook up the chemo. That's what they did this week and all was good. So this was nice news. I must be doing pretty well.

So, nuelstra shot, see Dr. Barth test results, round 3 of chemo. Not bad. I can do this. If the darn bowels will cooperate it would be a lot easier.

Keep your fingers crossed!

Gotta go pee! Pushing water for the next 72 hours.