I felt like the beginning of the road to chemo was going to get my haircut last Monday. The day dawned cool and crisp, the kind of fall day that marks the beginning of school again or back to work after a summer vacation. I drove up our driveway, marveling at the beauty of the Wyoming plains and at the fat bird squatting on my mailbox.
I have been known as the girl with the braid since my teen years but wanted it cut short so the eventual hair loss from chemo would not be so traumatic. I had a dear friend accompany me for support. Eeriest part was looking in the mirror after the hair cut and seeing my late mother staring back at me. She wore her hair in the straight bob I now have for years.
That evening I drove my love Bob and I down to Denver to be ready for my Tuesday IP port placement in my abdomen and to start chemo on the same day. It felt good to be healthy enough to drive—Bob hates Denver traffic craziness so at least this time I was glad to share the burden. We checked into a comfortable motel not far from the big Aurora medical settlement and settled in for the night.
(More below the squiggle but probably not to be read at meal time, a few too many graphic descriptions for comfort).
My Day One of Chemo began 8:00am on Tuesday morning with checking in to the med center. Lots of new buildings and nice rooms in Colorado these days. They called me in at about 9:00am for my transformation into a surgical placement, giving me a hospital gown and little yellow grippy socks (my favorite so far have been the purple ones with bear paws you get from the Laramie hospital). I was in surgery for a port placement by about 10:00am and then came out of the anesthesia at about 1:00pm.
Was then transferred up to a nice private room overlooking Denver with a glimpse of the smoky Rocky Mountains beyond. At about 3:00pm, nurses started trying to get access to my ports, an IV port in the chest that I had had installed last week in Laramie, and my new IP port into my stomach to deliver drugs straight into my abdominal area. The top one worked okay but the IP port was hard to find so I had to be sent to radiology to find it, a whole world apart from my hospital room. They inserted the needle that the nurses needed and then escorted me back upstairs.
They then tried to start my Taxotere but something clogged the port so I got multiple injections of blood thinner to make everything work. Sometime in the early evening, everything was finally working well enough for my first infusion. At first everything went very well. I even commented to Bob, “I can handle this.” Then massive sharp pain struck my lower back and I started crying out from the efforts and wondering if I could get through this if it all would be so painful. Bob hit the call button and a doctor stopped the drip. My back calmed down after the drip finished and with the help of Oxycontin, we got through that first round. The awful back pain never came again, thank heavens.
Didn’t start the next round of chemo drugs, the Cisplatin until after midnight. The nurses and doctors worked throughout the night to pump me full of saline, then Cisplatin, then saline again. I was asked to turn from one side to another every fifteen minutes to make sure it was sloshing properly around in my stomach. Part of the routine was anti-nausea drugs including Zofran which they pulled after I started getting an irregular heartbeat. Finally, at about 6:00am everything finished up. Packs of doctors and medical students came rushing in to peek and then I was allowed to sleep for a couple of hours. We got an excellent discussion of what was happening from the resident and fellow in charge and then got sent out into the world with a couple of prescriptions. We go back next Monday night to start the routine again. With luck it will become routine.
Bob drove me home, I was way too wiped to do anything. Have been doing not much more than answering a couple of e-mails and sleeping since. I am eating light but ordinary meals, the nausea meds seem to be keeping everything under control. I have some diarrhea but nothing horrible. Not fun at all and so glad I do not have to teach this fall. But I can do this. Lots of things I need to do.
Monday Night Cancer Club is a Daily Kos group focused on dealing with cancer, primarily for cancer survivors and caregivers, though clinicians, researchers, and others with a special interest are also welcome. Volunteer diarists post Monday evenings between 7:30-8:30 PM ET on topics related to living with cancer, which is very broadly defined to include physical, spiritual, emotional and cognitive aspects. Mindful of the controversies endemic to cancer prevention and treatment, we ask that both diarists and commenters keep an open mind regarding strategies for surviving cancer, whether based in traditional, Eastern, Western, allopathic or other medical practices. This is a club no one wants to join, in truth, and compassion will help us make it through the challenge together.