Treatment - Day 01
Don’t worry, I’m not planning on posting after each day of treatment. Since this is a milestone, the first time I’ve ever done chemotherapy in my whole life, I felt compelled to write about it.
Today we met with Dr. Engelman (our Oncologist), did some blood work, and then started treatment. There wasn’t anything revolutionary that came out of the talk with Dr. Engleman today or the blood work (still waiting for the updated tumor markers) but the 5ish hours of treatment today were interesting. Here is the sequence of events:
- Get Settled - The nurse gets me set up in what she calls the ‘Cadillac of Chemo Chairs’. It’s a leather, heated, power recliner with a vibrate function. I used this chair to sit on and recline in. She also referred to the pump that was pushing the chemicals into my newly installed port as ‘kind of like a milking machine that they use on farms’. It doesn’t get much more ‘Iowa’ than that. (I knew exactly what she was referring to. No explanation required.)
- Then we start with 1.5 hrs of fluids. They want to flush out my kidneys before we start the heavy duty drugs. One of the drugs metabolizes in the kidney.
- Then we get into the anti-nausea drugs
- Steroids
- More Fluids
- Chemo Drug #1 - Cisplatin 45-60 minutes
- More Fluids - 45 minutes
- Chemo Drug #2 - Etoposide - 45 Minutes
Overall, it was a good experience. I’ve been very tired and have experienced a little nausea during dinner. Otherwise, no major side effects from the first day. It will be interesting to see how these things compound over the course of this week. They say that chemo stays in your system for 48 hrs and having treatment 5 days this week could be pretty intense.
Thanks for the continued support! You guys are great!