Day One Done!

Here I am getting the first drug of my R-CHOP
treatment. I was in this recliner chair the entire day.

So I just completed the first chemotherapy session today. Obviously I was anxious leading up to it; my blood pressure level was 143/91- the highest it has been in two weeks now since I registered in at 178/102 when I went to see my primary physician about my indigestion four weeks ago. I have since been averaging 121/76 which is for the just above the 120 average for normal blood pressure. Even the morning of before heading to the hospital, it was 134/82 when usually it's in the 112s. However, it did go down throughout the day as I got more comfortable going through the chemo treatment and I just measured it just now and it was the lowest it's ever been- 106/62. This was a direct result of my complete change of diet and cutting out salt/sodium and fat and any type of processed food from my diet. I weighed in at 148lbs- 23 lbs less than I was four weeks prior. My friends used to laugh at me for my stomach, my ponch, my beer gut...it's all gone now and flat as I-5 freeway! I can share with you my strict if anyone is interested in losing weight-- the healthy way.

Anyways, back to my first day of chemo. It went better than I thought and I'm relieved the first cycle is now over. I was there for a total of 8.5 hours. We checked in at 830am and left just about at 5pm. It could have been sooner but we had a slight hiccup. My nurse accidentally disconnected my ratuxin drug- the last of the IV drugs I was going to take. The reason was that I had an allergic reaction to the ratuxin (a normal reaction) an hour into the IV drip and started getting chills throughout my body and lower back pain. This is because the ratuxin starts breaking up the cancer cells right away and because of the breakdown, it releases potassium and other things that cause stress on the body. So, they stopped the IV and gave me some pain medication (aderall) and a cortisone steroid shot. The aderall hit me almost immediately and I started getting extremely woozy. Luckily Aylang had just gotten back from picking me up my lunch so I scoffed the veggie sandwich down before I passed out. Unfortunately, when we were ready to being the ratuxin drip again, for some reason, she disconnected the IV tube thinking it was the saline bag (they all look the same- clear plastic bag).

So essentially, for the next 1.5 hours, I was getting nothing into my system because the ratuxin was just dripping onto the floor! No wonder I couldn't feel any of the effects! It wasn't until she asked me if I wanted to take a walk around the floor to get some exercise in did we notice the drip on the floor. When she realized it was the ratuxin on the floor, she freaked out and obviously, I freaked out even more! She's been nursing 20 years and this happened during my first chemo treatment?!! She estimated I probably lost about 150cc during the 1.5 hours, so she said she would call the pharmacy to see if she should give me another bag to make up for the lost liquid. Of course, I was very worried whether she estimated the right amount that was lost-- I didn't want to OD on anything! She came back a few minutes later and said that she needed to talk to the oncologist to get his thoughts as he would need to make the decision. However, in talking to another nurse, she estimated that the lost ratuxin was more around 50cc as she had given me a smaller drip dosage due to my allergic reaction, to which my oncologist said it wasn't a big deal to lose that much. Even though it still worried me to not get the prescribed dosage, she reassured me that I had more than enough chemo injected into my system for a day so I guess I'll just have to trust my oncologist's judgment on that. So yeah...other than that slight hiccup, it went better than I thought. Truthfully, I thought it would be a lot more painful and I'd be really woozy after the treatment. Mind you, I was woozy but it wasn't that bad.

I'm on the R-CHOP (each letter stands for a different drug) regimen- a standard treatment plan for treating lymphoma. I'm told the first session is always the longest as they have to administer the drugs slowly into my body and then see how my body reacts, and ramp it from there. Subsequent sessions should be about half the time I spent today. I'm just glad the first and toughest hurdle is over. I feel pretty good at the moment but the Prednisone I took causes sleeplessness and increased appetite so here I am still up at 12am...  At least the reassuring thing is that I will have an appetite. The one scary thing about chemo for me was possible lost of appetite as you see other cancer patients rail thin from the chemo treatment but most likely for me, I'll be gaining weight which is a great thing because if I'm eating, then I'll have the strength to get through this journey. The other scary thing as possible side effects are nausea (but I have medication for that) and fatigue but so far so good. So, anyone up for a midnight snack run?