Pictures...and a Thursday Review

Man I crashed last night...I was still having some nausea so I took a gravol...fell asleep at 8pm and ended up sleeping till 9am.

The result of the port-a-cath surgery. This is pretty fresh and the blood has pretty much dried up now. BTW - no showering for 10 days. Just below the red part is where the port is...you can kind of see the non-shiny part.

Super Radioactive Man - Diletta took this picture when we realized that I was the cause of the border shut down.

Yes - she rides in the back seat now.

This is NOT me. After the port surgery the tech did show me a very similar picture of myself, but mine is on the other side. The large round thing is what gets stuck everytime, the nurse needs to hit the center part. The long tube travels up the chest and back down to around the heart.

I kinda looked stoned here....I don't think I am, but this is around 5:30pm ... I had been there since 8:15. Thankfully, next visits will only be 4-5 hours.

You can see the mass at the back of my throat on the left side of the picture.

Here is a more detailed version of Thursday...

My mom and I arrived at the Cancer Centre around 8:15am. The secretary at the front desk started into it right away...you'll do fine, you'll be OK...blah blah blah..didn't really need to hear that right then. But she was doing her best to try and make me feel alright...I was a little too anxious.

I went up and checked in at the chemo treatment room, then went to sit in the waiting room. There were about 10 others waiting too, and once again, I was by far the youngest...I specifically remember one old man looking at me in 'that way' - too young. There are many people younger and a woman did come in later that day that was a bit younger...even the man beside me was only about 40 - with two kids.

We waited for about 30min until I was called into the chemo room. I was called in by Sheila who was the nurse that was going to be starting me up. I got settled in bed and they started me on a basic saline IV. I had brought all the pill form drugs that I had been prescribed and I knew that I had to take a few of them that morning. However, I had to eat first, so my mom went and got a few yogurts and a muffin for me...so this delayed us a little bit. I ate the food and took the pills: Prednisone, Tylenol, Allopurinol and Pariet. She then started me on Benadryl in preparation for the Rituxan.

I'll make up some numbers to describe how I was given the Rituxan - I had to take a total of 500mg of Rituxan, so they set me up to take 50cc for 40min then 100cc for 40 min etc...at about the 4th level, near the end of it ~ 1pm, I started to have a reaction. My shoulders started to get itchy and my throat started to get itchy, tickley and weird feeling. The nurse stopped the chemo immediately and they started me on a drug i forget the name of (an antihistamine stronger than benadryl) and I think some zofran. I was still a little groggy from the benadryl. Around 2:30 they started me back up on the Rituxan. Typically, the body won't react again to the Rituxan. So it took me until about 4pm to finish it. They thought that I would have to come back the next day because the chemo center closes at 5pm and there are no doctors on staff after that time - they even made me an appointment. But at around 4pm they decided to push on and get me done so that I wouldn't have to come back the next day. This was great. So, we got it done and I left around 5:40 and I felt fine. Mom made a great meal of chicken piccata, broccoli and potatoes.

I had taken the drugs at 9pm (kytril) and was fine until about 10ish. Then I started to get diarrhea, cramps and nausea. I took 2 Imodium around 10:30 and that cleared up...I woke up around 12:40 and felt nauseated again, so i took the Stemasil (which was supposed to act as the second line of defense against nausea, second to the Kytril) but that made me feel worse...I got the chills and then about an hour later I barfed up everything I had that day...not too bad, but then I felt ok for about 5min. Then the sweats began...I fell asleep about an hour later and didn't wake up until about 8am. Not bad.

During this time I was really freaked out...I didn't know if I was coming or going and I was truly scared. I had my mom and wife sitting there helpless and I felt so vulnerable. I couldn't help but cry.

The next morning I took my drugs with some yogurt (Prednisone, allopurinol and pariet). I felt like shit all day - just that lingering nausea. I went for a walk around 2pm and it wiped me out. We called the cancer clinic around 4pm and they suggested that I just take over the counter gravol...the only problem with this is that it will make me drowsy. I took it around 4pm and felt asleep around 8pm until 2am....then I was nauseous again around 3:30am and took another...slept till 9am. Great sleep.

Today, Saturday, I just feel shitty. But I'm going to try and walk again this afternoon.

My favorite Picture of Isabella .... so far.