March 21, 2011. That was the beginning of my chemo life this time. I went to the clinic about 8 in the morning and they accessed my port so they could draw the labs. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but I had a port put in while I was in the hospital because I have very hard to find veins right now. With a port, they don't have to look for a vein and it is a lot more convenient all the way around. After they drew the labs, I went up to see the doctor. That was somewhat uneventful. I was out of there and back downstairs before the time I was scheduled to see the doctor at all.
I went back down to the AIU (Ambulatory Infusion Unit) and waited for them to get the drugs together to get me started. After they gave me the benedryl, I became very sleepy so, although I had my laptop with me, a lot of the time I was too tired to do anything on it. They had me on three chemotherapy drugs: Carboplatin, Taxol (same as last time) and Avistan (new this time). The Taxol took 3 hours to drip and the Avistan took about an hour and the Carboplatin took about half an hour. Altogether, I was at the cancer center from 9 am to almost 6 pm. That's like a full-time job!
Because I got done so late, the pharmacy was already closed so I wasn't able to get the nausea medications before I left. That was a problem over the next two days because I did become nauseous until I got the medications. As soon as I got them, I took some of each, but it took most of a day to stop the nausea. The best thing to do, I find, is to take the medications BEFORE the nausea begins. In fact, the doctor told me today to take the one pill every 12 hours starting tomorrow and take the others as needed.
About half way through the cycle (middle of week 2) I started having fevers. I hadn't been feeling well and decided to take my temperature and it was 101! I was told to call in if it ever got above 100.4 so I made a call. All they could suggest was to take tylenol and drink gatorade. By doing that the fever went down, but by the next morning it was back up again. I went for labs in week 3 and they checked and found that I had a UTI. I was put on antibiotics and I am almost finished with those. Since I started on those, I haven't had a fever once.
I purchased a car last Sunday (4/3) and spent Monday getting labs done then I tried to get the car inspected on Tuesday so I could get it registered; but it didn't pass. The shop said it would cost over $200 to fix, but the guy I bought it from did the job for $30 plus the part. I was able to get that done last Friday and I took care of all the paperwork so now my car is totally legal! That's all for this post!
As you know, cancer has touched my family many times. I remember all too well what it was like when my cousin went through her breast cancer and my aunts went through ovarian and lung cancer.
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