Dr. Poison

I actually called my chemo doc that at my first appointment with him. What else can he do to me? His name is actually Sanjay Yadav. He’s a really nice guy—very genuine, very concerned, and very informative. He has already given me his cell phone number—to use even when he is NOT the doc on call. He laughed at my 3-ring binder. Yeah, I put together a binder with all sorts of information. Cancer stuff, medication information, insurance papers, etc…it’s my style I guess—to have this on hand. He saw me showing it to Walker at my first treatment. He giggled at me from across the room.

So the first chemo treatment…I was there about 4 hours…they say it won’t always take that long, but since it was my first, they wanted to be sure I handled the process OK. I guess I did—I drove home after (with Walker in the car). She was a trooper. We sat among 10-12 other chairs…not all filled. But those that were filled were occupied with women all probably over the age of 60. They sort of looked at me funny—in the sense that “hey, she’s too young for this.” Perhaps in some way they were thinking that “she’s young enough to do this.” There was one other new patient there. She had a little breakdown when she realized she needed all of the prescriptions filled BEFORE starting that day (and she was already hooked up). But the nurses rounded up the meds she needed to get by until she got hers filled. I wanted to give her a hug and tell her everything was going to be OK. The woman next to her (Norma Jean) was starting her 2nd 12 weeks of treatment. She was filled with advice, but also chatted at length about the bad stuff that can happen after treatment. I almost asked her to stop, but I guess it’s good to know the good and the bad.

The procedure itself was pretty uneventful. I had my laptop with me (all of the ladies there were rather taken aback by that), and Walker had reading material. They basically plug the tubes into the port and start pushing fluids. They give 2 different kinds of anti-nausea/vomiting meds first, along with one of the oral pills I have to take for those first 3 days of treatment. Then the 3 different drugs (fluorouracil, epirubicin, and cytoxan—and yes, I can pronounce all of them) are administered—each separately. The first 2 are “pushed”—the nurse has to use a syringe to get them into through the port. The last one is an IV drip. So by the end, I felt as though my eyeballs were going to pop out from all of the fluids.

They also push you to drink a ton of fluids—it helps with the cleansing part, which minimizes the potential side effects. I haven’t felt too many—I was nauseous that first night, but I was also in a car that I was not driving (ie. motion sickness evil). But since then, I’ve just had raging heart-burn and the fatigue part has set in (hey, you chose to read this). Unfortunately it’s not the fun fatigue—the drop on the couch and go to dreamland kind. It’s just more like recovering from the flu—low energy. But my appetite has been good (and steroid aided), and I am getting good sleep. The drugs they give for the first 3 days after treatment have to be amazing. They have kept me going and strong so far. I’m still going to have to deal with some stuff, but at least it’s not the vision of 20 years ago. And I am beginning to crave much healthier things. I haven’t had coffee in 4 days and I am loving a glass of juice in the morning. Might not seem like a lot, but for me, that’s all good stuff.

I go for my first blood draw tomorrow—a couple of days early since I have to travel for work. Hopefully the blood count will stay high and I’ll stay free of infection so the next treatment won’t have to be postponed. Dr. Poison is doing his magic—I can feel it happening.