Cycle 1
Week 2: I woke up Monday morning still riding the high from the weekend. I felt great on Friday and that continued through the weekend. It also helped that the treatment was going to be about half the time as all last week, and once today’s treatment was over, I wouldn’t have treatment until next Monday. 6 whole days of no treatment sounded like a vacation from the chemo. Checking in for my appointment was smooth sailing, but the wait felt unusually long. Once I was finally called back, they brought me into a treatment room and took blood samples for the week and sent me back into the waiting room. Another hour of waiting and I was called back again for my appointment with the nurse practitioner to go over my blood work results. Other than my sodium levels being slightly low, everything else looked perfect. Off I go again to the waiting room, where Shannon departs for work, and I hang around until my name is called once more. This time the wait wasn’t as long, and I’m taken back into the treatment room to receive my dose of Bleomycin. I take my pick of a chair, and then I wait, and wait and wait. The nurse overseeing me keeps telling me she doesn't know what’s going on. The lab should have mixed my dose already and it should’ve been here by now. After an hour and a half wait, my tiny bag of chemo arrives. Prior to this, I was told it was going to be an hour of treatment, so I was mentally prepared for that. After hooking me up, the nurse told me that it would be 10-15 minutes until I was out of here. Besides the waiting for a quick treatment the day was smooth sailing, so when I got home, I didn’t really know what to do with myself. I thought I’d be productive for the remainder of the week, but I think my body just needed to rest from the prior week. I decided to take it easy that week and let myself rest. I took our dog, Blue, for walks when I felt up for it, and by the end of the week I managed to go on a run. It felt harder than it usually did when I went for a run, I could tell the chemo was starting to kick my ass.
Week 3: Heading into week 3 I was still feeling positive and good about my treatment. The short weeks felt like a blessing. After checking into the hospital, the wait wasn’t very long. They call be back and take my blood samples and send me back to the waiting room. After about an hour of waiting I’m called back for my appointment with my oncologist. My blood work was still in the good, but a sub-group of my white blood cells, known as neutrophils, were nearing low levels, which was still expected to happen. We ask about the next week’s treatment schedule because Monday was a holiday, and my treatment called for 5 days. My oncologist said we’d shift everything a day, and I would make it up on the following Monday. Meaning week 5 would be a long Monday with the rest of the week off, and they we’d be back on schedule come week 6. Shannon heads off to work after that appointment, and a short wait in the waiting room passes and I’m taken back for my treatment. This time there was no hour wait, and my bag of Bleomycin arrives within minutes, and before I knew it, I’m hooked up and ready to go. Just as fast I was hooked up, my treatment was done, and I was free to go on my way. This week I upped the walks with Blue, but still not much more than that. I found myself feeling more and more tired after doing basic activities. I started to get nervous for the next cycle, I had a feeling that it was really going to kick my ass. More so than cycle 1 had, and I still had another cycle to get through after that. All of this was expected but going through it was another story. I honestly didn’t expect it to hit me this hard. Coming to terms with not being at my 100% was something I still had to do. At the very beginning of my chemo journey, I had hoped to workout as much as possible but that wasn’t happening. I know it seems like an odd thing to focus on while going through chemo, but I was weighing in at my heaviest and I wasn’t feeling comfortable in my own skin, so being active is something I wanted to work on. I was relieved a little bit on the Thursday of week 3 when I went for my Pulmonary Function Test (PFT) and the doctor told me my lungs were still performing well, basically where they were at before starting chemo. As I’m sure you surmised from that previous sentence, the PFT is a test that measures how well your lungs are working by measuring lung volume, capacity, flow rates, and gas exchange. My oncologist wanted me to take a PFT after every cycle to make sure the Bleomycin wasn’t affecting my lungs. When you take this quick test, you’re seated in a glass box with the door open to start, and then they put a tube in your mouth and plug your nose. The first test you take a couple of normal breaths, then they want you to take a big deep breath in and then blow out all the air from your lungs, and I mean all the air, when you think you’re done, they tell you to keep blowing the air out, and you do that 3 times to get an average. The second test is you take a few normal breaths and when you’re told to exhale and then hold your breath for about 10 seconds before you can resume breathing normally. The third test, they close the door to the glass box you’re sitting in, let it calibrate and then you place the tube back in your mouth. The doctor I saw told me she calls this the “Kevin McCallister” test. You place your hands on your cheeks and take rapid breaths in and out without puffing your cheeks, and then all the sudden this blockage occurs in the tube (which is part of the test) and you have to keep breathing like that, but it feels like you’re not able to breathe at all. After that’s done, you’re let out of the glass box and are free to go on your way.
The next night, after eating dinner I was wiping off some food I got on my face, and when I looked down at the paper towel, I noticed a bunch of little hairs on it. So, I wiped again, more hairs, and again and even more hairs. The hair loss had finally started to set in. I started wiping and rubbing wherever there was hair on my body to see where it was happening. It appeared to just be my facial hair and the hair on top of my head. The next morning when we woke up, Shannon noticed that I had some patches on the sides of my head missing. I hopped in the shower, lathered my head with shampoo and started rubbing as hard as I could. I just watched as the hair piled up in the drain catcher. It was a little unnerving, but again I had expected this. Later that day Shannon shaves my head once more.
Monday comes and it was a beautiful day out, so we take Blue for a nice long walk, and we each decide that we want to go for a run. Shannon opts for running around the neighborhood, while I opt for a change of scenery and head to the high school track. Warming up for my run I felt good, I broke up 2 miles into sections of running and walking, until the last mile which would be just 1 mile non-stop. I think this is where it really set in that I am nowhere near my 100%. Maybe not so much in the past year or so, but I’ve usually been a decent runner. But on this day, it felt like I had never run before. Not only could I not run 1 mile without stopping, but I also couldn’t even finish 1 lap of the track without having to walk. Each lap felt harder and harder to complete. My legs felt heavy, my heart felt like it was going to burst through my chest, my lungs burned and felt like they were going to burst, my sides were cramping. It was a defeating moment for me, but I was still proud that I didn’t leave that track until I finished all 2 miles. I just needed to apply that mentality towards the next 2 cycles of treatment, and I knew I’d be okay. I was going to have highs and lows, but all I had to do was keep moving forward.