Chemo treatment #2

Before I update you on my 2nd chemo treatment, let me tell you about the last couple of days. I did end up experiencing bone pain. Not mild, either. I was taking ibuprofen every 6 hours and it didn't help. It hurt so bad the night before last I was in tears. Matt got me a heating pad and with the combination of the ibuprofen, it eased the pain and I was able to sleep. The pain was gone the next day. It was mainly concentrated in my back hip bones. Looking forward to that again soon.

We got to my appointment today at 10:30. We waited for an hour before we were finally brought back to the lounge. There was a minor emergency with another patient and he ended up being taken away by an ambulance. Once we got back to "our" chair, I was hooked up to the mediport. My nurse today was Katie. Blood was drawn from the mediport (I made the mistake of looking down at it...surreal) and sent off to the lab for my WBC. During this time, my vitals were taken: temp-98.2, blood pressure-137/90. After about 10 minutes, the count came back. We were hoping for a 1.2 at least. It was a 2.4! Yea! At least we know the shots were working. I was immediately put on the antinausea drip (which I found out is called Aloxi and is mixed with Decadron.) Go here for more information on Aloxi: www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/aloxi.htm

After the Aloxi, came the Ativan. I found out some more information on Ativan, too. It is also an antiemetic (which is the technical term for helps with nausea) and has a relatively potent amnesic effect, which makes you forget about the nausea if you did have some. Wow. Katie was telling us these were discovered after the fact. Pretty cool.

Next came the Bleomycin-a 20 minute IV drip. Then came the Adriamycin (the red death, the red monster, or the red devil--take your pick at the nickname...), which looks like this:

Nurse Katie, Adriamycin, and me

After the Adriamycin came Vinblastin. After that was the Decarbazine, a 2 hour drip. All in all, it was pretty much the same as last time. Pretty uneventful. Thank goodness. I posted some more pics from today under the other chemo album. You can get a more close up pic of the Adriamycin. Now I wait for the side effects. Hopefully I'll have less insomnia. Only time will tell...

Thanks and good night!