Sorry I haven’t been too quick with this one. I’m getting a lot of emails from people asking how it went and saying they’ve been checking the blog for an update so here it is.
They set me up in a hospital bed with Ian beside me in a comfy chair. There weren’t a lot of people around and the atmosphere wasn’t too scary. The nurse explained to me the two drugs that I’d be receiving. The first bag, the RED one (insane), would take 20 minutes and the second bag, the clear one (phew) would take 40.
She poked me in my port-a-cath and set me up with some saline at first. She gave me some steroids and an anti nausea pill. The pharmacy sent up the chemo shortly after – they have to order it right beforehand so that it’s fresh because I guess it expires quickly – and she attached the red bag.
It was freaky to watch this evil red liquid go into my chest. I still don’t know if I’m cool with chemotherapy to be honest. But we tried to laugh and be silly which we always do, and it passed the time pretty well.
The machine beeped and a different nurse came over and set me up at 30 minutes instead of 40. That kind of sucked that she wanted to rush me, mostly because sometimes it can hurt your sinuses and face if it’s stuffed in you in a shorter time. Of course, my face started burning and really aching so they had to slow it down. My nice nurse came back and checked on us a lot and we were fine.
When it was all over, it was about 3:30. The mean nurse pulled the needle out pretty hard and without supporting the port underneath my skin. It was really stuck in the port and she wasn’t overly gentle, but whatever, I’ve had two babies.
I got a few anti nausea prescriptions (one of them is a pot pill. What the hell) and we went to fill them right away. They told me if I was vomiting and couldn’t keep any pills down that I had to call the 24hr home care to come and give me an anti nausea shot. I never ended up calling. I don’t know why, my social worker is always pointing out that North Americans try to be brave and suffer in silence, I guess it’s kind of true.
I started feeling sick at 6 and by 8 was in full swing with spins and nausea and throwing up and the whole shebang. It was a long night and I had to take sleeping pills to let myself fall asleep.
The morning of day 2 sucked. I couldn’t lift my head, open my eyes or talk. The room was spinning and I was irritable about even answering a question with a nod, because everything was SO difficult to do. I spent the day in bed awake, but probably seemed asleep to Ian whenever he would check on me.
Day 3 was a repeat of day 2. Terrible to wake up and keep feeling like a train has hit you, sleeping through the night didn’t help me feel rested. I had a lot of dizziness that day, and it felt like someone was shaking me around. I started feeling lonely because I couldn’t communicate that I wanted company, and I was pretty bad company because I appeared to be sleeping, but I was feeling a little crazy from laying in a bed that long.
Day 4 5 and 6 came and were almost worse than the first few days. I had this terrible restless pain all throughout my body. It felt like somebody put helium in my bones and I couldn’t be still for too long, but moving at all took almost every bit of energy I had left. I had to jolt my legs or throw my arms up. Poor Ian thought it was crazy for sure, but my body felt like it was going crazy. It was pure physical anxiety. My eyes were open more on these days but I still couldn’t lift my head for much longer than a few minutes.
Day 7 hurt in the same way and my body was going crazy, but I was able to sit up for maybe a half hour at a time and could walk across the room without having to lay down and have a break.
Today is day 8 and I have more energy. My feet still hurt like when you’re tired and you can’t make a tight fist. I have to sit down and breathe a lot, but I can go upstairs and even took a walk tonight, which really shocked me, and I think I’m a little too proud about.
All in all it’s extremely hard and insane to me, but I know that it’s doable. My hair is supposed to fall out on Thursday and after that, everything should just keep moving forward and being the same.
Our spirits are up and we are fully capable of doing this. I appreciate all of your emails and support and yes I am incredibly lucky to have my support system, people have been incredible to us and we really appreciate all of it.
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