Was feeling like shit last night so I went to bed at about 10:30pm, which is real early for me. Slept ok, not great but not worse than it’s been for the last month/month and a half and better than I did the night before. Had to get up at 7am, WAY earlier than usual. Wanted to give myself extra time to eat before going and do the few things I’m supposed to. They prescribed some cream with pain killers in it that I’m supposed to put a lump over my port and then put suran wrap over it and go like that.
Got to the office ontime at 9am, or close enough. Waited a little while and then was brought to the room, their was a nice old guy and his 30-something daughter there that talked quite a bit while they were there (they left like an hour before I did). Chair was decently comfortable. The nurse was nice. Explaining what stuff was and answering questions. The needle that went into my port, it’s a butterfly style needle, like what they use for drawing blood only the needle went out the bottom at a 90degree angle vs. just going straight out the front. When she put it in it hurt pretty good, even though I did use the painkiller cream. After that it was pretty pain free as far as the port was concerned. They hooked up a saline drip and it was hooked up through a pump that was on the stand holding the bags. It was about an 8-12″ cube that was latched onto the pole and had a little screen that took up 2/3 fo the front. The nurse plugged in a syringe that was for anti-nausea, after that was done the pump beeps and the nurse comes and attaches a bag to the pump that was another anti-nausea med. After that she injected some of one of the chemo drugs into the back of my arm to see if their was a reaction because apparently that one can have an allergic reaction and it’d be real bad to inject a whole normal syringe directly into my jugular vain and have it pumped everywhere if I’m allergic to it. They wait an hour and check if I had a reaction, I wasn’t allergic to it. It was one of the drugs that if it doesn’t go into your blood stream and goes into your tissue it can create big problems. They only put a little bit right under the skin. Hurt putting it in and Burned some once it was in but not bad. Think it’s the A in the ABVD treatment I’m getting, wikipedia seems to be pretty correct right now, so check out more here. As the acronym shows, it uses 4 drugs. Three that are syringes that she pushes into the IV line with the saline but after the pump. This doesn’t take long. The remaining one is a bag that goes before the pump and just goes until it’s empty. That one takes an hour and a half. Usually they do the ones they push first because they are all ones that can screw up your tissue if the needle isn’t in the vein fully. Since I have a port she said that wasn’t really an issue, so she started the bag that takes 90mins. After that was done she waited a little while for it to pump just saline into me for a little while and then pushed the other three drugs. One of them is in a larger gauge syringe, like an inch or little more in diameter. That one is red. The others were clear and like half or 1/3 the gauge. The red one turns your pee pinkish or red almost instantly, after a little while of saline being pumped after pushing the syringes we were done and I went and took a piss before leaving and it was already pink, that was like 15mins later or something.
Some time between 11 and 12 they gave me a sandwich, chips, soda and some soup. They were all pretty good, the ginger ale wasn’t that cold, kinda barely cooler than room temperature with a cold can. The only weird thing was when a chick walked in with a cart saying she did music therapy. On the card she had some bongos and some kind of electronic instrument. She described it as a digital version of the harp things from the music class in elementary school where you push a button and it holds down a thing that has pads on it to make a chord happen when you strum it. It was probably not cheap since it had midi ports. Sounded awesomely casio-tastic. When she ask what kind of music the old guy liked he said frank sinatra and she tried to sing new your new york but totally couldn’t figure out when to play the cords with the words and it sounded nothing like it. She stopped and just talked to us. She ask me what I liked and listed some stuff and she played and sung a song by pearl jam… it was madness. Then talked a little more and moved on to a different room.
On the way home I was real tired, almost fell asleep in the car a few times (it’s only a 30min trip). Drank a bunch of water when I got home (I’m suppsoed to drink a bunch of water to help flush the meds out of my kindnies, like 5 or 6 quarts a day or something she said), took a piss and went to bed and slept for like 3 or 4 hours and then got up and watched some TV and whatnot. Felt and feel pretty ok. Stomach was a little weird but not too bad, took some zantac for heart burn before going to sleep and compazine for nausea after I woke up and my stomach was a little weird. Don’t know if it helped or if eating helped but after eating a sub from subway it was feeling a little better. Only went back a little bit if at all towards feeling worse but not much. We’ll see what the next few days hold. The old guy said that it doesn’t hit him for 48 hours.
5 to 6 quarts a day ? Do the words, ‘wizz’n like a sailor’ mean anything to them ? That’s a lot of water but it must be VERY important to get that stuff out of your system ASAP to prevent kidney (and other) damage.