Here We Go UPDATED

A brief snippet of conversation over two steaming bowls of Cream of Wheat, approximately twenty minutes ago:

The Husband: "Do you want some craisins for your Cream of Wheat?"

Me: "No, I don't want to puke up any little red things later on."

The Husband: "That's a bit morbid, but I see your point."

UPDATE 8:19 p.m. 4/20/07: Just for the record, no, I haven't thrown up.

Not once.

That was me being paranoid. They've got me on three different anti-nausea drugs, decadron, ativan, and compazine, and they seem to be doing the trick, even if they all have their own little side effects associated with them, like drowsiness, fatigue, and a complete loss of appetite, and in the case of the decadron (which I had to take at three different, specific, times yesterday, before this even started) a flushed face, anxiety and sleeplessness. (Yeah, so last night was a real joy, because I had to take it at ten and wake myself up at four in the freakin' morning to take another dose.) But I haven't puked. And the oncologist swears that I won't, provided I keep up with these medications over the next three days. My job, as the RN pointed out to me right now, was just to stay on top of the medication (i.e. don't wait until the symptoms show up and then take it) and to rest, and I should be fine by Tuesday, when most of the drugs will have worked their way through my system.

The chemo procedure itself was, well, pretty boring, on the whole. It took about five hours, all told, to receive the drugs via IV---and I received them in a very swank recliner, in a room full of about twenty-five other people, receiving their own chemo regimens, who all had their own swank recliners. It was sort of like day camp for sick people, but instead of doing arts and craft projects, we all watched tee vee, read, listened to iPods, or, in the case of the husband and myself, we played a game of travel Scrabble, wherein I kicked his bony little ass by about fifty points. (That's what happens when you get stuck with the 'Q' at the end, after having already been beaten into submission by a few triple word scores.) Fortunately, I didn't have any allergic reactions to the drugs, and tolerated them well, except for when they pushed a half-sized bag of the decadron into my system and I thought I was having an hour long hot flash, but, again, that's just a side effect of the drug and it was remedied by a cold washcloth to the back of my neck. I tolerated the three hour taxol drip well, but by the time the half-hour carboplatin drip was done, the last bag of the day, I wasn't feeling so well, sort of like I had the beginnings of a bad case of stomach flu. Fortunately, we were on our way home and in and out of Walgreens, with all of my prescriptions, in a shot. And, within fifteen minutes, I had compazine in my system and it started working immediately. Enough for me to take a long nap. Which felt good, considering I had very little sleep last night.

So, all in all, it's going better than I expected. Which is good, because I kind of low-balled my expectations, assuming the worst. What I now have to look forward to is being immuno-compromised by next weekend, possible anemia, potential decreased white cell count (furthering the problems with my immune system), complete hair loss within three weeks, and, perhaps, neuropathies in my hands and feet from the taxol. We'll just have to see how it all shakes out.

Just in time for my next chemo session, three weeks from today.

Good fun, no?

And, just remember, my devoted Cake Eater readers, I'm already cancer free.

I ask again: good fun, no?

What's that line about the cure being worse than the disease?

And, Robbo, craisins are simply dried cranberries. They look just like raisins. Except they're red.

Posted by Kathy at April 20, 2007 07:43 AM | TrackBack