chemo #6

Chemo #6 today and my second on Taxol.  After getting through the first round of Taxol and knowing what to expect, I felt a bit more prepared for this treatment.  (Not prepared for what actually happened, but we'll get to that...)

Posing with the #6 sign from my daughter.

These little notes always mean so much!

I normally get bloodwork a few days before treatment, but due to everything going on with COVID-19, I wanted to minimize visits outside of the house of any kind, even to the lab, if possible.  So I called my oncologist's office last week to ask if the bloodwork could be drawn at my office visit prior to treatment and was given the okay as long as I could arrive earlier.

A note about doctor's offices... They are constantly making updates due to the pandemic to keep all of us safe.  I have visits every 2 weeks, and at my last visit there was a physical barrier to direct patients to stand back at registration but this time there was a glass shield enclosing all the registrars and the waiting room was reconfigured for social distancing.  I think about how incredibly busy my oncologist's office was at my first visit when everyone had someone with them and how different it is only a few short months later.

Despite my earlier arrival, my blood wasn't drawn until the end of my visit, so by the time I made it to treatment, the lab hadn't released the results yet.  That meant my nurse had to wait for the green light from my oncologist before my infusion could start.  I already had my cap on and port accessed but we had to wait.

Once treatment started, things progressed pretty quickly.  Like the first time, the Benadryl nearly knocked me out... but I couldn't quite let myself drift off to sleep.  Have you ever felt like you were crawling out of your skin?  That's how it felt about a half hour in.  I stretched my legs and just couldn't get comfortable, like my body was telling me something.  I figured maybe it was time to eat so took out my packed lunch.  After a few bites, I had to stop because it felt like my stomach was burning.  My face felt hot and my eyes started to water.  I actually took a picture of myself to see if I looked flushed and my eyes appeared red.  It was hard to decipher if I was more short of breath under my mask, but I knew something wasn't right.  So I told my nurse I felt weird, and couldn't quite explain it, but she stopped my infusion right away and I saw her dashing around the corner while my eyes were getting heavy...

When I felt alert again, it was like suddenly there were 4-5 people in front of me, all doing different things and talking to me.  Through the fog of my brain I still remember being impressed by the coordination.  I was flushed out and given more Benadryl and Pepcid, and my vitals were monitored.  My heart rate was high but otherwise everything else appeared okay.  It seems I had a mild reaction to the Taxol.  My oncologist was contacted, and once I returned to baseline we had to wait another 30 minutes before restarting.  I think back to this moment now, and how it could have been much scarier but the nurses helped me through.  I'm so grateful for the team of nurses that had assured me they were trained for dealing with instances such as this, and that I actually saw it in action and know that to be the truth.

The rest of treatment was uneventful except that the added time due to all the delays had me wearing the cold cap for close to 7 hours.  That definitely left a mark...

A really long day with the cold cap on. And the mask too...

And by the time I left the infusion center, it had already cleared out for the day.

I saw at least 4 other patients come and go in the time I was there.

After all of that, tired is an understatement.  What a day.