THE CHEMOTHERAPY PROCESS
The Chemotherapy Process
Number of steps to the chemotherapy process: 13
Number of hours it takes to rank them: 6+
I’m halfway through my treatment today and have cursive lots about how I feel after I’ve had chemo, but not still actually got around to composition about how it is administered. Well, today I’m going to cure that…
The day of chemo ever starts early, just because the treatment takes such a long time, so I have to be at hospital by 9am which means leaving the house about 8am to get there. Once I’m at the Cancer Centre, where the chemo suite is located, then I get movement in a comfy lead and get digit of my arms, whichever seems most likely to display a viable vein, enwrapped in an electric heat aggrandize for about 1/2 hour. As I mentioned in my last entry, this is done to dilate your veins and to help make them easier to find and cannulate. The actualised impact of cannulisation crapper take anything from a few minutes, to 1/2 hour if they struggle to find a vein, as they did with me last time around. So by this stage it’s usually between about 9:30-10am, and the impact of existence given the drugs hasn’t even started.
Once the cannula is in you are hooked up to a pump, which the tube in your limb is fed through before existence hooked up to the drugs at the added end. This is done so that the viscus crapper curb the flow of the drugs, and also so that the nurses crapper go absent and leave you, because when the activity of the drug runs discover the viscus beeps and the nurses are alerted to the fact they requirement to modify it. Then, before some drugs are separate through, and also after each drug had finished, a activity of salt is flushed through the vein to keep it open, and to ensure hour of the drugs rest clinging to the vein wall. After this initial salt flush, you obtain your pre-meds. In my housing these are two anti-sickness drugs, and two antihistamine drugs which are given to conflict some hypersensitised reation to the taxol. Once these have gone through it is finally time to be given the chemo drugs. First is taxol, which has to be given tardily and takes 3 hours to separate through, then it’s the carboplatin, which in oppositeness has to be separate through apace and so exclusive takes around an hour.
So, the whole impact of the chemo existence administered, erst the cannula is in, goes like this:
Saline
Dexamethasone (a steroid anti-sickness)
Saline
Piriton (antihistamine)
Saline
Tagamet (an antihistamine that controls acid reflux)
Saline
Ondansetron (anti-sickness)
Saline
Taxol
Saline
Carboplatin
Saline
Pre-meds: total time taken = 1 & 1/2 hours
Taxol: total time taken = 3 & 1/2 hours
Carboplatin: total time taken = 1+ hours
Once every that is done it is around 4pm, and I finally get backwards home around 5pm, 9 hours after environment out. As you crapper imagine, even though I spend the whole day movement in a chair, it is a rattling tiring process. The drugs themselves start to change you quite apace too and make you quite drowsy, specially the piriton which ofttimes sends me to rest for about 1/2 hour after I’ve had it. Still, the good thing is that I exclusive have to go through it every added 3 times. I crapper sure feature I’m not going to miss it erst it’s over!
Em
No New-trophils Anywhere In Sight
Number of days since last chemo: 28
Number of days until incoming chemo: 10 (cell counts permitting)
Number of chemo treatments left: still 1
Level of tiredness: sky high
Yep that’s right, it’s still added delay! The woman came discover yesterday morning to take my pre-chemo bloods, and I was rattling hopeful that my WBC calculate would have gone up sufficiently after an extra week. But the Chemo Suite phoned me in the salutation to feature it had actually gone down! It’s today 0.9, so that magic 1.5 target seems a long way off. Mind you, I feature I was hopeful that it would have gone up, but I haven’t felt some meliorate this week so it’s belike not that surprising. I did wonder whether it might have exclusive gone up a little bit, but I sure didn’t expect it to fall. It seems those GCSF injections rattling were a rank waste of time!
Because I still feel rattling dizzy and weak the added delay is a comfort in many ways. It means that by the time I have my final treatment though, I’ll have had at least 2 months of delays over the instruction of the chemo, which is quite a lot really. Having said that, when I first started the chemo I predicted that it would finish in February, and it looks like I’m going to be right! My first instruction of chemo took 5 & 1/2 months to complete, and this digit is on track to be about 6 months, which is what I imagined. Blimey, 6 months - composition it down as a figure rattling brings it home just how long I’ve been having chemo for. When I think backwards to that first conference it does seem like a lifetime past though - it was summer, with warm, light evenings and the trees every still had leaves on them, a taste of a oppositeness to the grey, miserable day that I crapper wager discover of the window now!
By the time I start to get stronger again after the chemo finishes it’ll be reaching backwards into summer which will be bizarre, it’s like a whole assemblage will have been wiped out. From experience when I had my first instruction of chemo I know that when it finishes it feels like you’ve been in some sort of time warp. It makes it quite hard to change because, while you feel like you’ve gone backwards to where you were before it every started, everyone else’s lives have of instruction moved on. It crapper make it difficult to try and fit backwards in with things again, especially when you feel push that everyone expects you to be ecstatically happy that you’re getting backwards to connatural again, and you just feel discover of locate in the “normal” world. Because there is no getting absent from it, having cancer, especially when you’re teen and don’t rattling know anyone else your geezerhood who has been ill too, does make you feel segregated. The cancer information benevolence Cancerbackup actually has a great country on ‘Life after Treatment’ on it’s website which explains rattling well the kind of feelings you crapper get erst your treatment is over. I have to feature I didn’t have the rattling depressed, provoked emotions that it describes the first time around though, and I sure hope I won’t have them this time either.
Still, to be thinking about life after chemo is jumping the gun slighty considering my final dose is still a way soured yet. Right today I requirement to centre on resting lots, and keeping my fingers decussate that my neutrophils and white cells get multiplying over the incoming 10 days so I don’t get some further delays…
Em
Limping Towards A Finish
Number of days since last chemo: 9
Number of days until incoming chemo: 12 (cell counts permitting)
Number of chemo treatments left: 1
Mood: oh so tired
It’s been just over a week today since I had chemo but I am still rattling feeling the burn. I’m 5 treatments in and the “end”, at least in terms of the chemo is in sight, but pupil does it seem far soured correct now. This dose has knocked me sideways, and 9 days on Justin is still helping me get around the house, get dressed, get me in the clean etc.
I realised how wiped discover I was going to be from this digit the moment it started, because I spent 3 of the 6 & 1/2 hours it took to have the chemo asleep. Then when I got home I went straight to rest for added 16 hours - pretty impressive! When I finally got up I felt incredibly weak, and over a week on that still hasn’t changed. It maybe didn’t help that the wonderous aprepitant tablet didn’t seem to impact quite as well this time. Although I wasn’t sick, so it apparently still did a good job, I had much worsened symptom and had to take more added anti-sickness tablets than connatural to try to curb it. I’m not sure why it wasn’t so good this time, perhaps because of having the stomach bugs before the treatment my stomach was more sensitive. Whatever the reason, it took until Wednesday for me to start to feel less displeased and start eating better.
On top of that, to bilobed the usual levels of tiredness I feel after a chemo dose, and in rank contestant to my mega rest of the first night, I have spent every period ever since struggling to sleep. The think is that to try to assuage some of the pearl discompose I experience as a lateral effect of the Taxol, I was given a larger and longer instruction of steroids to take than connatural post-chemo. The hospital warned me not to take them after 6pm because they make you rattling restless, so I never took my final dose later than 4:30pm. But even doing this my mentality would be racing at 100 miles an hour at 3am, so that in the morning I would have a mentality that was still going mad, and a embody that was utterly exhausted. I stopped taking the steroids on Friday, but when Justin spoke to digit of my district nurses that salutation she said you should never take steroids after 2pm at the very latest otherwise you’ll never sleep. So, some noise example advice from the hospital then! In a offense defence of the steroids they did seem to help stop the pearl discompose get quite so bad. At least that’s what I thought up until last period when it kicked in with a vengeance - it seems they just delayed it instead. So, not a very successful endeavor with the steroids really, nonnegative the district woman said that they take 72 hours to impact discover of your system, so by my account I’m not looking at a decent period of rest until tonight (I rattling rattling hope!) I’m so tired though I think erst I do start unerect again I might never stop - maybe I’ll vex my 16 hour record!
At the moment I’m feeling incredibly weak and exhausted, as I guess you would expect after a week like that. It’s more than just a housing of needing some rest though. As the chemo has gone on I have found myself existence more and more wiped discover after each treatment, and that feeling has been extreme after this one. It’s quite a hard thing to explain the extent of really, but I guess this is quite a good illustration: a pair of days past I was movement on the sofa and felt thirsty. My drink was on the table infront of me and every I had to do was to ordered forward and get it - it took me over 45 minutes to get the energy together to actually do it. I’m at the saucer today where I’ve exclusive got digit treatment left, but I’m so exhausted it feels like the large mountain in the world. Don’t get me wrong, I’m so entertained to be at the one-to-go stage, but I can’t get myself up and down the stairs at the moment, let lonely begin to contemplate going through added one. Still, with my track achievement for delays I’m sure I’ll belike have longer than added 2 weeks to gather some energy up together. I’ve had the GCSF injections again this time to wager if they crapper help my white radiophone counts, so it’s just added housing of waiting to wager when I have the murder tests in 11 days. Right today I requirement to try and find some energy from somewhere. It’s taken me 6 sittings to type this, so I think perhaps I requirement to leave composition until I’m a taste more dynamic!
Em
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Number of days since last chemo: 20
Number of days until incoming chemo: 1 (cell counts permitting)
Number of chemo treatments left: 2
Mood: determined (through gritted teeth!)
Well, the time since I last wrote has been a taste more eventful than I would’ve liked. It every started last Thursday morning when that pesky stomach fault I mentioned in my preceding entry returned with a vengeance, exclusive this time with symptom as well. Justin titled in the doctor in the afternoon, and he said that I was dehydrated and rattling necessary to go to hospital, which I stubbornly refused to do! He quite reluctantly united that I could stay at home, on the precondition that I started to take on some fluids. A pair of hours later however, I was still existence displeased and my temperature had gone up to 38ºC. Now as a chemo enduring you are instructed correct at the start of your treatment that if you ever get ill and your temperature reaches 38ºC, then you have to call the Chemo Suite, which is what Justin duly did. They also wise that I necessary to be taken into hospital, so Justin phoned the doctor again, who told him to call an ambulance. So, for the ordinal time since my treatment started I got carted soured to hospital in an ambulance.
Once I got to hospital I had to spend over 4 hours on a trolley in A&E, during which time my temperature went up to over 39ºC, and my murder push fell. About 9:30pm I finally got moved to a 48 hour ward, where I was unintegrated in a lateral shack so as not to contaminate added patients, and so that they couldn’t contaminate me. If there was some grayness lining to be found in the status then it was definitely that - existence in your possess shack kinda than on a ward is like existence in a 5* hotel kinda than a B&B! At this saucer though I still hadn’t been effected on a drip because they necessary murder test results to become backwards before they would do anything. Just before 1am, having got to hospital at 5pm, my tests results came backwards and a doctor finally came ammo and ordered up a drip, nonnegative I got given an anti-sickness injection to try and resolve things down. Exhausted, and feeling very dehydrated, I effected down to try and get some sleep, exclusive to be woken up by the nurses at 2:30am to be taken for an x-ray. Now don’t communicate me what the determine of that was, because I still have absolutely no idea!
Still, after existence in hospital for about 24 hours things finally started to resolve down, and after 48 hours I was well hydrated, my temperature had gone backwards down to normal, and though my murder push was still a taste low, I was allowed to fortuity discover and become home. Now, a pair of days later, I’m feeling very tired and a taste see-through, but there’s no time to better because it’s backwards into chemo tomorrow (presuming my radiophone counts become backwards ok from the murder tests I had this morning). Actually, I saw my oncologist on Friday while I was in hospital, and he seemed happy for me to delay my chemo by a week to give me more time to recover, but I’m alive that I’ve had quite a few delays already since I started chemo, what with the miscarriage and low radiophone counts, and I just feel like I can’t venture having so many delays that the treatment doesn’t work. Also, unless I get told I definitely can’t have chemo then I ever feel like that means I should, and because he didn’t give me an absolute no, then I took that to mean I should go ahead, which I’m sure is nonsense, but that’s just the way I think!
So, every going to plan, this time tomorrow I should be movement in a bounteous chair, hooked up to a pump, having lots of drugs tense into me. Of instruction there’s exclusive a week until Christmas, which means that, though I should be eating a bit, I’m going to be feeling pretty wiped discover on Christmastime Day. But, as long as it gives me a effort at a healthier 2008, I rattling don’t care!
I wish you every a rattling Merry Christmas, and a fantastic New Year, and I’ll indite again in 2008 to let you every know how this digit went.
Em
Tags: wound cancer, lung cancer, cancer drugs, cancer doctor, endocrine cancer