3. The Woes Of Chemo

Each day of chemo starts with getting an I. V. stuck into a vein your fore arm.  Ouch!   Then blood work is done to determine how my blood was doing and to see if I was healthy enough to get chemo.  Then you get assigned a chair in a room where the chemo is administered.  It all starts with pre-medications mixed into a saline solution consisting some pain killers, Benadryl, and steroids.   All done by a I. V. infusions.

The problem here is that you get the I. V. taped to your arm for many, many hours.  Some days could be as much as 6 to 8 hours, or longer depending on how your body reacts to the drug.  And after the first day of this, I learned that shaving your arm will save you some unnecessary pain when they take the IV out.

The first 3 days of treatment went as well as could be.  Except for my encounter with Rituxan which I already mentioned.  But about 3 days afterwards I really learned what the word nausea means!  For about 5 days I could barely keep anything down, and felt like crap for about 10 days.  I was warned that this could happen, and one of the cancer nurses suggested I try acupuncture to help keep the nausea at bay if it did happen.

The after chemo glow is a nightmare, your exhausted, but you cant sleep.  Your not hungry but you force yourself to eat, but you usually throw it back up.  Its kind of like the worst flu you can imagine multiplied times 1 million!  Then the steroids kick in and you eat everything in the kitchen, but like I said, sometimes Mr. Nausea kicks in and gets rid it for you.

As luck would have it I couldn’t get into see an acupuncturist before my next 3 day round of chemo, but  I did get in after it was over.  But after a few days after I had my 2^nd round of infusions I got very sick, very fast.  In fact on my 2^nd visit to the acupuncturist,  when I stood up to go in for treatment I passed out.  All I know is everything just went black.

My wife took me to see my general doctor as he wasn’t too far from the acupuncturists office.  One look at me and he called an ambulance.

An ambulance ride later I found myself in the Emergency room!  And was entered into the ICU. Turns out I came down with sepsis and it turned into pneumonia!   I spent 3 days in the ICU unit and 11 days total in the hospital.  I was told that when I entered the hospital I was near death.  Needless to say, I learned to notice the warning signs of this very soon. 

When I was finally sent home I had to be in isolation at home.  No getting out of the house except for doctor’s visits or chemo.

What was supposed to be my 3^rd chemo treatment was cut short as the Oncology doctor wanted to take it easy on me as the FC in FCR is what makes you sick as it is what hits you the hardest.  So I had Rituxan only and was told to skip the FC for that round!

Before the next round of FCR chemo I got to have acupuncture a day before chemo started.  I got the full 3 day treatment again, and it worked, I did not get nauseous or sick from the chemo after that. 

4 weeks later I got round 5 of my 3 days of FCR chemo.  No illness thanks to acupuncture and no surprises.

On what should have been my 6^th and final round of FCR chemo my Oncology Doctor told me that the blood work came out so well that no more chemo was needed.  And was soon told I was in remission.  Yaaaaa!

Slowly life got back to normal.  And I was soon back to almost a normal life.  I had regular check ups every month, but about 6 months later the blood work started to get worse, then about 8 months later I noticed all of the same familiar pains and symptoms coming back.   More on this later.....

Never Ever Give Up!