Dancing With Cancer Memoirs...Dancing With Chemo

Not even a week has passed since my port was installed (ha, makes me sound like a car or something getting worked on!) and I'm sitting in the clinic for my first round of chemo. By now I am so tired and fed up with being jabbed with needles and i.v's and fingers up my butt that all I want to do is just get up and walk away from it all and not look back. But I also realize that I cannot just up and walk away from cancer and pretend that it still isn't lurking in my body somewhere, waiting for an opportunity to take hold of an organ and grow again. Damn.

So here I sit in the lab trying to draw on the remaining courage I have (which is damn little) and let the nurse stick yet another needle in me, this time in my port. Needle was a poor description for this thing. This thing was the size of a fucking nail. I was nervously looking around for the hammer.

With me is a nurse and another nice young lady, whose job title I didn't know, but was trying so hard to comfort me, and all I could do was sit there and try not to cry or pass out. Additional reinforcements were obviously needed so another nurse is called in. Finally I allow nurse #1 to stick me with the needle.

"SON-OF-A-BITCH!!!" I have gotten in the bad habit of hollering that lovely phrase whenever I am stuck with a needle. Bad habit I know. I manage to stay upright until I see a vial full of my blood. Then my head lolls back, my eyes roll up, my face goes white, and nurse #3 yells for a vial of smelling salts. All eyes are watering from the salts except for mine. I couldn't smell them. Must be my hay fever. I didn't feel congested but my sense of smell was obviously impaired.

Finally I am told to find a chair or I could pick one of the two private rooms since no one was in them. I picked a private room and settled in. I knew this was going to take at least two hours. I didn't know I would have to get up and pee so much, but I did. Thank goodness for the t.v in the room. It got mighty boring sitting in the chair hooked up to an i.v. It was a very comfy chair though, a tilt back one. And I was given warm blankets, snacks, and drinks. They really did try to make the experience as pleasant as possible.

Finally the chemo is done infusing and I am hooked up to the take-home pump in a fanny pack. I've never been a an of fanny packs, I think they look lame. A couple of anti-nausea prescriptions and some xanax are called in to the pharmacy for me so after I get gas in Ole' Bessie, my 1993 Ford Ranger (great truck, btw) I head to the pharmacy.

For some reason I am feeling weepy and it is hard not to cry as I pay for the drugs. I stop at the video store on my way home and pick up some comedies to watch for the next couple of days.

Around 5 am the next morning, Wednesday, I wake up and feel a migraine starting, and I can tell it is the real bad kind, so I go ahead and take an imitrex. Over the next couple of hours, it gets worse. The epicenter of it is located on my left shoulder in the trapezeus muscle. It feels like someone took a baseball bat and knocked me in the back of my head and my left eye feels like it is wanting to pop out. I take my anti-nausea meds and another imitrex, to no avail.

I start vomiting. I am in agony all day. I cannot keep anything down. The vomiting quickly turns into painful, gut wrenching dry heaves. The pain in my head was horrendous and made worse with the dry heaves. Once again, I feel like I just want to cease existing, anything to make the pain go away.

A neighbor friend comes over to offer some moral support. Late in the morning, in desperation, I call the nurse and explain what is happening. She said she will talk with the doctor, another oncologist as mine was off that day, and call me back. Early afternoon she calls me back asking how I was doing. I told her I was no better, and throwing up more frequently and the pain was worse. She said she will call in a prescription for some vicoden and tried to give me some encouraging words. My neighbor friend was sleeping and I didn't want to wake her, so my daughter Candace called one of her friends who was kind enough to drive over, pick her up and take her to the pharmacy for me. I'm wondering how the hell I can keep vicoden down when I can't even keep air down??

The rest of the day went by in a pain filled haze. I took another imitrex that night along with all the other medicines, but they keep coming back up. I call the clinic again and was told there was nothing more they could do for me. Thanks a fucking lot. I was still awake at 3 am, but eventually I did finally manage to doze off.

In the morning, Thursday, the headache was not nearly as bad, the nausea was not nearly as bad, but I'm still feeling quite like shit. Thankfully I'm not vomiting nearly as hard or as frequently as yesterday and the vicoden stays down long enough to do some good. I needed to find a ride to the doctor's office to get the needle removed from my port around 4 pm, when the chemo bag was finally empty. My next door neighbor, Connie, who was unfortunately laid off, was able to take me in. I was in no condition to drive.

I also saw the oncologist after the needle was removed. I wish I had seen him first before it was removed. He was 'not impressed' with how I was looking and wanted to admit me to the hospital. I argued briefly against that (of course) but not for long. I finally agreed. So Connie took me to the hospital instead of back home, where the port was accessed again and I stayed overnight while getting rehydrated with fluids and potassium; my blood chems were all out of whack from all the heaving.

Doc came in to see me Friday morning and said I could go home early afternoon and go see him Thursday of next week. This was my fifth hospital visit this year. I hope this is not how all the chemo treatments are going to affect me.

I hope.