Chemo Treatment 5 of 8 (Pole Dancing)

Last night as I was typing the last few sentences of my blog, I got the shakes. Chills, nausea and a fever soon followed. These are all common reactions of Herceptin especially the first treatment, which is a loading dose. I think it was the first time that both Steve and I realized the power of the drugs I’m taking. When you’re on chemo and your temperature reaches 38 degrees Celsius or more, it is important to contact your oncologist because of concern for infection; so Steve talked to the oncologist on call last night. At this point there is no concern as these are typical reactions. So on top on the dexamethasone steroid, I took Tylenol 3 and procholrperazine for nausea. If these types of symptoms were present 3 or 4 days from now, they would probably get me into the hospital for antibiotics.

My blood counts were lower than my last round of blood counts. My oncologist says that Taxol, the chemo I’m on now, isn’t as hard on the blood counts so hopefully we’ll see an increase in the levels next time. The symptoms that are most common with Taxol are fatigue, muscle and joint pain and numbness and tingling in hands and feet. We’ll see what happens.

As for today’s treatment, it went as fast as it could have, which was 5 ½ hours. The chemo nurse from yesterday persuaded me to leave the needle in my port overnight so we would be ready to go for this morning. I’m still not sure I like the idea; not from a physical perspective but more from a psychological perspective. Seemed weird to be walking around with a needle sticking out of me. Anyway each Taxol treatment comes with a number of pre-meds…diphenhydrmine, ranitidine and more prochlorperazine, then the Taxol infusion. It’s nice to be home.

I have to get up to go to the bathroom several times during treatment because of all the fluids being pumped into me. As I made one of my trips today, I laughed at how it seemed like I was ‘pole dancing’ weaving in and out of the obstacles with my IV pole in tow.

Too funny,
me