Thursday, November 6, 2008

Chemo Day #2

All went fairly well today. I have a mild headache and stomach cramps right now...but hopefully they will subside.

Now for the long version...I took my Emend (anti-nausea drug) at 8am this morning and then my mom and I headed to the cancer centre. The Emend is to be taken one hour before chemo starts. I got into the chemo room for about 8:30 and jumped into bed #8 (my number). The first thing I asked about was my blood counts...Dr. Hamm had told me that my neutrophils had to be a minimum of 1.2 to get treatment (normal range is 2.0 - 7.5) and mine were at 1.3. The nurse told me that the actual cut off is 1.0 - so Dr. Hamm is being cautious - Good. I didn't write down all my other blood counts - but some were still low, but better.

They started me off with pills (tylenol, zofran, benadryl, prednisone and pariet). At around 9:15 they started me on the Rituxan. This drug was given to me through my port and was to take about 90min. But, because I had the reaction last time, they were decided to go at it a bit slower. So, it would be 150min (2.5hr). During this time, the nutritionist came by to talk about my nausea....blah blah blah...eat high protein foods. I also asked her about sushi, because I love it, and she said to avoid it. Boooooooo.

At noon I took the Prednisone and Benadryl pills again....the rest of the afternoon was Cyclophosomide, adriamycin and the vincristine. I'm not sure if I mentioned this or not, but the Adriamycin is given by hand using a large needle and injected into the port. It is bright read and is supposed to make my pee the same colour (I forgot to look last time cuz everytime I peed I was sitting...if you know what I mean). I'll be sure to look this time.

After the last drug, Vincristine, they do one last saline solution to flush out the line. This all ended around 3:30pm.

Now lets hope that I have a good week in terms of side effects. The Emend should help, and I'll be taking the Kytril and Stemasil as I was told (not like what I did before - and substituting them for the gravol - I'll be taking gravol in addition to). Also, I'll be taking the neupogen for 10 days so that should help my blood counts.

P.S. I mastered how to go to the bathroom in that place without touching a thing - except my thing. There is one bathroom for all the cancer patients and it is kinda weird going in there...Everyone has to walk with their IV and this likely makes it difficult for a lot of people and the results end up all over the place - if you know what I mean.

I have some pictures but I really don't feel well now...I'll post tomorrow.

Ciao,
Jeff

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Way to go Jeff. Two down! Hope all goes well for the next few days for you. Brian and I were wearing our t-shirts during all day meetings with our financial/stock advisors in Toronto. It was hilarious. Then I went shopping and I had a lot of comments from people LOVING my t-shirt. They had no idea the meaning of it. They just loved it.

Have a great week! Hopefully.

Love Kym

Anonymous said...

Great Jeff! Another one down.... Hope those blood cell counts hang in there.
love,
val

Uncle Paul said...

Way to fight the good fight Jeff. You are in my thoughts every day. Keep it up. Your a fighter. (Nice hair by the way)

Love,

Uncle Paul

Joanne said...

It's Friday, 3:15 Jeff,

I hope you are feeling OK.