My first Chemo

My day started off completely normal -- I took Henry to school and got myself a cup of coffee. But instead of heading off to work Mom and I headed once again to the hospital....this time for Chemotherapy.

I started by giving blood to check my white cell counts and then saw my oncologist for about a half hour. We mostly discussed the side effects of chemo and all the drugs they're going to give me to help lessen the effects.

I then went up to the chemotherapy suite. Prior to going in I was given an anti-nausea drug called Emend. My nurse's name today was Linda and she was really great. She explained every step to me as she did it. She gave me another pill called Ativan. It's a sedative that is used in chemo to help prevent nausea and vomiting.

I had put numbing cream on my portacath site prior to leaving the house, but I still had feeling so Linda gave me a shot to numb it further. Next Linda put the IV into my port. I didn't like this so much, lots of pressure. Unfortunately she had to do it twice because it didn't go in the first time...yuck!

She then gave me Aloxi, another drug to prevent nausea and then Decadron, a steroid to help stabilize the anti-nausea drugs and make them more potent.

Then on to the Chemo drugs. First the Adriamicyn, the pink cool aid. I thought it was pretty interesting that they put this in manually with a syringe rather than through a bag on the IV drip. After that came the Cytoxan. Usually it is infused in about a half hour, but she did mine over an hour because it causes headaches, so doing it over an hour was an attempt to prevent the headache I felt coming on.

Finally I was done...I was at the hospital from 10:30 to 3:45! I'm sure it will take less time in the future, since a lot of yesterday was getting me acclimated to what was going on.

I was really tired by the time it was all finished...you can tell from the photos below.



The anti-nausea drugs seemed to work pretty darn well. I only got a little queasy for a short time. I fell asleep on the couch sometime between 8 and 9. Mom got me up and helped me into bed a little after 10. I got a good night's sleep and woke up feeling pretty rested.