Re-induction

I made it rather easily through my first night of re-induction chemo , I hope this is a foretelling of the next 4 days of chemo. Normally I would be on to a consolidation round (basically a half dose), but the docs thought I had too many blasts (cancer cells) and that we should hit them hard with another induction round of chemo.

When going through hell, keep going.     Winston Churchill

Boston Butt Cream Pie

For the perfect Boston Butt Cream Pie, you need to start with the specially formulated Boston Butt Cream.  

Spread cheeks wide, slather Boston Butt Cream liberally over rectal area, replace cheeks and Voila ! Boston Butt Cream Pie!

What's a bad day when you have cancer?

Several people have asked me what a bad day during chemo is like.  The first thing to understand is that a bad day while on chemo can quickly turn into a bad week.

 Last Thursday night, I had a restless night at home.  The pellet stove had been making noise all night, too much sawdust for the auger.  I had been up and down throughout the night checking on it, and at five a.m. I decided to get up and turn it off.  I wasn't sure I could go back to sleep, so I headed to the couch to watch the TV. I watched for a while and feel asleep for a couple of hours.  when I awoke, I was cold and had the shivers. I jumped into the tub to warm myself and crawled back into bed with Lisa. 

 When Lisa awoke she checked my temp and found me at 101 , a signal to head to the hospital.  By the time she called the hospital and readied the car I was already up to 105.  I don't remember much about the ride, my brain was in shutdown mode. We spent some 5 hours in the ER, and finally doctors from the seventh floor came down to examine me and get me headed up stairs.  I arrived on the seventh floor to nurses that I knew, and that I trusted would take proper care of me.  They started monitoring my vitals and didn't like what they were seeing.  My nurse called the eighth floor cancer ICU to get me a bed.  They had no bed and hospital admin suggested that I be moved to the general ICU, but my nurse refused and said she would watch me until they could make a space for me upstairs. Once upstairs it was determined that I had Sepsis, my heart rate, which is normally between 70 and 90, was 160.  My respiration  was double normal and I had no blood pressure. 

My ICU nurse was calm and in control.  Other nurses were suggesting that he run the fluids at 999 on the pump, but he let them know that he knew what he was doing , and they all left him alone, as he bypassed the pump, hooked the fluid bag directly to my Hickman and the put a blood pressure cuff on the fluid bag and pumped it up until the fluids were running faster than the pump could have pushed the fluids.  Within just a couple of hours he had flowed seven liters of fluid into me.  I looked like a water added Chicken, I had cankles!

A note about nurses, doctors are the brains, but it is the nurse that truly understand the body and it's limitations and it's possibilities.

 More than half of patients admitted to the ICU for Sepsis leave in a human sized zip-lock bag.

I lay on the ICU table for two days, my brain fried by my fever, I would wake and not know who or where I was. I wasn't sure I would or if I even wanted to live through ,but live through I did. I returned to the seventh floor to heal and then found that I had developed C Diff do to use of all the antibiotics. Now weeks of recovery.

Bad days, yes, but the good days will look so much better!

I Pooped

I know, who gives a shit?  And who wants to about my BM's?

From early on I've always been told that this is my cancer, and my cancer treatment My body doesn't get bad mouth sores,or some of the other common side effects. But my bodies GI tract all but shuts down and comes back like a new born babies.

For days I can only eat like a newborn, clear soups, juices, but no solids. Then I start introducing solid foods that are soft and easily digested.  So when my body starts moving these solids through my GI tract I rejoice that my body is recovering from the chemo.

I survived the first week

I remember thinking that the change over from Dr. G. to SCCA was a little rocky and that it was taking them forever to get me in and dose me. And then it's three days into chemo and I am barely able to understand what was going on around me! The opiod load they had me on was, shall me say, a little much. Like 3 times too much, I couldn't even figure out what muscles to relax to pee! My first round of chemo last year was a protocol commonly called 7-3. Seven days of a nasty chemo drug #1 interspersed with three days of a really nasty chemo drug. My current protocol is a 5 day program, with five days of nasty chemo drug #1 and at the same time five days of another nasty chemo drug , but wait there is more! In addition to 5 days of two nasty chemo drugs I'm in some new protocol when they give me, daily, GCSF. This drug forces my bone marrow to swell and produce large amounts white cells. The idea , if I understand it, is to have my body produce all the bad white cells (cancer) that it can, and then kill them all. I guess my bone marrow will get tired, stop being able to produce white blood cells and the chemo drugs will kill everything and then... remission! Day three at UWMC my poppy fog was lifting, everyone was trying to get me to eat, but I would just throw up the awful hospital food. The nights brought fevers and shakes and unimaginable general discomfort. To counter the effects of the chemo I was put on heavy steroids, which caused me to go diabetic

Now we add insulin to the mix. Day four and I'm starting to get a grasp on what is going on around me. I know I couldn't have done any of this without my Lisa. With Dr. G. I knew who my doctor was, here at UWMC I have a team (very Seattle Grace) there is the 1st year resident, the 3rd year resident, the fellow, a pharmacist, several others and my UW doctor.

The Hickman

I don't know why I have such a "gross out" response to a Hickman line. My first medical team had covered the chance that I would need one if I was headed for a bone marrow transplant as SCCA (Seattle Cancer Care Alliance) requires a Hickman. I had no trouble with the two PICC lines that Swedish placed. Maybe it's that the Hickman enters just above the nipple on your chest rather than out on an arm. It is just so close to your heart and so sick-person-ish looking.

But Hickman they want and Hickman I got!

As they preped me for surgery I had to keep calming myself, they laid me on the table, shaved all the hair off my right breast, had me turn my head left and then they covered my head! Luckily my nurse then started the opioids and my fears subsided.

Being at the UW medical center means they have young doctors getting their first chance to perform such procedures, and from poppy blanketed brain I could hear the senior surgeon explaining that she just needed to grab the end of the line and "tunnel" it up from my breast and then to push it back down through my vein. I'm still sore from all the pushing and pulling of inexperienced hands.

Remembering

Years ago I had the opportunity to skydive.  After a 4 hour ground course I finally boarded the little prop plane with all seats except the pilots removed. I knew all the commands that the instructor would give,  I knew all the saftey precautions,  I believed I knew it all.  I didn't know the noise the door would make when it opened, I didn't know the fear of hanging off the plane or of watching as the plane moved away at such a speed.

 I had signed up for two jumps that day and my second jump was much more difficult than the first.  I had already tasted the fear and trully knew what to expect.

As I start back though my second cancer treatment , I know what to expect and can even recall the nightmares that I went through the first time.