Surviving Cancer

Well, first chemotherapy treatment is done, checked off, and under my belt. This is one big step in the direction towards beating this whole cancer thing.

The chemo treatment itself was not bad, but the morning of was complete chaos. My son had a fever and an icky cough, so I made sure the kid’s care provider was okay with this. She was totally cool with, but said that the only reason she would not want to watch them was if they had the flu or hand foot and mouth, because she has two young children of her own, and that stuff spreads like wild fire. I totally understood where she was coming from. Luckily, I guess if you want to call it lucky, Everett only had a low grade fever and cough. So the morning went on as planned.

Since it was my first chemo and the doctors didn’t know how I’d react, so they want to you to not drive. Well since Josh had school, this became a problem. The woman who watches the kids, is amazing and offered to pick me and the kids up that morning, bring me to my appointment and drop me off, then watch my kids all day, and then come back when I was done to pick me back up and bring me home. Oofda is she a saint, or what? Well, realistically, as busy as it sounds, this plan seemed fool proof. Guess again.

The night before my first chemo, we had three tornadoes touch down in Sioux Falls. There were power lines down, building destroyed, trees and branches scattered everywhere, and also flooding from all of the rain. This caused many road closures, and even a no travel advisory. This made it more difficult to get to my appointment. Now, if this wasn’t enough, you just wait.

So my wonderful friend dropped me off at the cancer center where I would have my treatment. It was a few minutes after I got checked in, when I got a call from her. She told me that my daughter just threw up in the car. Are you kidding me? It was so unbelievable that that was one of her no no’s. So I told her I would call Josh and see what we could figure out. I really didn’t want to have to reschedule my appointment.

I call Josh, straight to voicemail. I start to cry and thing, What the *%@#*, beep, beep, be beep. (swear words, not out loud of course) I get called back right a way to get the first step started, of course. No waiting when I have this dilemma to deal with, but when I’m in no hurry at all, I have to hurry up and wait. I get called back so they can draw labs and place the catheter into my port. A little needle goes into my port and then has tubing for like an IV attached. Well, my port surgery was less than a week ago. I am still very, VERY sore from this, but the nurse starts pushing and prodding like it’s no big deal. The area is still swollen so she couldn’t quite find where she needed to put the needle, and she kept saying, “sorry, I don’t want to poke blindly.” Well, yes that would be nice, but could you stop poking my, less than a week old, surgery site!

She’s still pushing and poking, I start to feel clammy, get the sweats, dizzy, faint. I tell her this, so she finally stops. Lays me back and elevates my feet. Leaves to get me some water, and now I start to cry. I’m in pain, my kids are both sick, I can’t get a hold of my husband. I start freaking out. The nurse brings a couple more “seasoned” nurses in to help decipher where to place this catheter. I’m still freaking out about what to do about my kids. My friend texts me and says she’ll take my kids back to my house and give Audy a bath and take care of them there until I can get a hold Josh. Seriously, a saint this woman is. So I’m able to calm down a bit.

I got back to the waiting room to wait for my next appointment, where I am meeting with my oncologist. Finally, my husband calls me back. Apparently, he restarted his phone on the way to school and forgot to turn it back on. Of all days. So we quickly come up with a plan. He car pools to school so he didn’t have his own vehicle to drive home. So he took his test real quick that morning (still got and 86) and borrowed his classmates car and drove home so he could take care of the kids until I got home to take over. He would then drive his classmates car back to school (which is just under an hours drive) so that they would have a way to get home. Oofda. What a day. Thankfully, my friend stayed with me and the kids until Josh came back home. She was worried about how I would react to the chemo and didn’t want to leave me alone with no help. She is seriously amazing!

So, I go meet with my oncologist and pretty much talk about things we have already talked about. I then met with a nurse to have some chemo education on side effects, medications, things to watch for, etc… I’m able to start chemo right after that and because I was talking with the nurse before my medications started I got to have my own chemo room with a TV! I mean, not the coolest thing in the world, but it made me feel pretty cool! I had some pre-chemo medications that were given to me through my port, and then my chemo was started.

The infusion of the chemo doesn’t take long. It took about a half hour to infuse each of the two medications I get. It’s the waiting that takes the longest and makes my chemo appointments last around three hours, normally.

I also went home with an on body injector. It’s a little device they attach to the back of your arm. A needle injects a catheter into my skin after its activated, and then I had to wear this device for the remainder of the day and the following day, until it injected the necessary medication. It is on a timer so it was set to inject a steroid 27 hours after chemo. It injected medicine into me over a 30 minute period. When it was done I had Josh rip it off, which was probably the most painful part of the whole process. The OBI (on body injector) made it so that I didn’t have to go all the way back to clinic to get this one injection the day after.

The OBI was a life saver because I literally slept almost the whole next day. I was up for maybe six hours the entire day. Today, Friday, wasn’t much different. I woke up around eleven and had something to eat. Watched a little bit of my comfort movie, Harry Potter, and then feel back asleep until three in the afternoon. Now here I am writing this.

Like I said in my title, the fatigue is real. It’s like nothing I have experienced before. I also have been experiencing some sore and achy muscles all over my body today. I would like to think and hope this is the worst of it.

Pray that it is!