Two Down, Four to Go

Just a quick note to say that yesterday's treatment went swimmingly.

Once again, we got our own little room (as opposed to my own little La-Z-Boy recliner and Zach's own little non-reclining chair out in the bull-pen section of the treatment area). It's basically the difference between having your own office and sitting in a cubicle: lots more room, the ability to close the door to keep out noise (although it wasn't too bad yesterday), a couple of prints on the wall, a private closet, and even a semi-private bathroom.

Imagine a hospital room that is much less institutional (no smell, for example) and even a bit cozy, and you'll have a sense of where we spent 6-1/2 hours yesterday. (Next time, though, before I let Zach take an action photo, I will remember to remove the lovely blue-and-white drape that made me look like I was waiting to have a two-pound lobster served to me. Sooo attractive.)

Other bonus attractions:

• A visit from my pal Danielle, which was a lovely treat.


• The wireless access, not to mention the delight at learning that Zach's recent brainstorm was likely responsible for it.


• My oh-so-wonderful oncologist halving my dose of Benadryl (one of several "pre-meds" I get—this one helps prevent allergic reactions to the heavy-duty drugs), so that instead of being completely zonked for the next 4-5 hours, I was actually awake and alert and clear-headed and able to do things like read (a triumph!), feed myself (an even bigger triumph—poor Zach had to literally spoon-feed me chicken soup last time), converse intelligently (I think) with Zach and Danielle and my oh-so-wonderful oncologist and several different nurses, make a few phone calls, and check my e-mail (on Zach's laptop, while he was out procuring snacks and lunch—next time, I'll bring my laptop, too). Put simply, other than being tethered to an IV pump through the port that I continue to hate (more on that in a future post), I felt pretty normal. Unimpaired and independent, you might say. And those are two very, very wonderful states of being.

As swimmingly as things went yesterday, this is still chemo we're talking about, and there are, of course, the inevitable down sides:

• The few minutes when I thought I might, in fact, be having an allergic reaction to one of the chemo drugs, despite the five different pre-meds I was on (steroids, Benadryl, Tylenol, and two different anti-nausea medications). I had this weird feeling in the center of my chest—sort of a warming sensation, like you get when you take a sip of Scotch (which I have done maybe once or twice in my life, but it's a pretty memorable feeling). See, the port that I continue to hate goes from just below my clavicle straight into my heart, which means that sometimes I feel whatever is coming through the IV pump right in (or near) my very own, very important pump. And, well, it's a little bit freaky. Last time, of course, I was pretty much unconscious when this particular drug was being infused, so I couldn't have told anyone if I'd had this strange sensation. This time, I was exceedingly conscious, and that meant that I quickly had two or three nurses at my bedside, stopping the chemo drug, re-starting the saline drip, and watching me very closely to make sure I wasn't, say, going into anaphylactic shock (a very bad thing). And asking me to describe what I was feeling, which proved more difficult than you might think (until Zach came up with the very apt Scotch analogy—he has, it is safe to say, drunk more Scotch in his lifetime than I ever will). The fact that I had no reaction to the drug last time around was a good indication that I wasn't, in fact, allergic to it, but the fact that my Benadryl dose had been cut in half this time (to the standard dose) meant that we couldn't be absolutely sure. So everyone stared at me for a while to make sure I didn't have any telltale signs of an allergic reaction (like my face turning deep red or purple—yikes!). Then one of the nurses slowly re-started the drug, and—you guessed it—I was perfectly fine. Group exhalation all around.


• I did pretty much conk out for a few hours before dinner last night. That, combined with the steroids I'm on (two doses the day before treatment, two doses the day of—plus an extra dose by IV, and two doses the day after), made it impossible to sleep through the night, even though I took (as directed) an extra dose of Benadryl to try to counteract the upper effect of the steroids. I woke up about once every hour from 2AM on, but I managed to go back to sleep each time until around 7:30AM, when I gave up and started writing this post.


• In addition to the steroids, I'm also continuing with one of the anti-nausea medications (until tomorrow), a thyroid medication (unrelated to the chemo), and an anti-heartburn medication (because chemo wreaks havoc on the entire digestive tract, as does a post-IVF drug—tetracycline—that I was on for several days, so I've been enduring the unpleasantness of heartburn for most of the past month). All of these drugs have very specific instructions about when to take them, whether to take them with or without food, etc., so just keeping all of that straight is something of a chore. I also have another anti-nausea drug as a back-up in case the other two don't work. One of the risks of lowering my Benadryl dose is that I'll have "breakthrough nausea" (two words that should never be juxtaposed) this time around, but so far, so good.


• I have that funky, post-chemo (and, probably, post-pre-med and post-post-med) taste in my mouth, which means that some foods I really like taste just awful, and that's a bummer. Fortunately, this did not include the yummy dinner that Zach made for us last night. Hooray! And last time, the bad taste went away after a few days, or maybe a week, so I'm hoping it will skedaddle pretty quickly this time, too.

And now I am off to try to tackle the embarrassingly high stack of unread newspapers that I have allowed to accumulate over the past couple of months. (I have this very strange compulsion about the New York Times, and, well, the New Yorker—I can't bear to recycle them unread (or, in the case of the Times, at least un-skimmed-through). Yesterday, for the first time since probably New Year's, I came tantalizingly close to finishing the newspaper on the same day that it was actually printed, so I'm hopeful that I can make a dent in the stack this weekend, before the really unwelcome side effects (exhaustion and fuzzy-headedness) kick in.

Wish me luck!