Week 1

Day 2: Well, I woke up this morning feeling terrible. On top of getting sick last night, I had a terrible night’s sleep, but they did warn me of this yesterday. They gave me a steroid, which is part of the nausea medication, but it ramps you up so sleeping would be tough that first night. Since I woke up exhausted, I referred to my handy dandy Whoop app, and it showed me a 1% recovery.

Screen shot from my Whoop app, so far I’m just killing it in the recovery this week.

A tough start to the day, but I tried not to let it get me down. I told myself to not let this get in my head and put me in a bad mood. I decided I’d take advantage of my time sitting in the chair all day and take a nap. Shannon wakes up and starts getting ready for work, and we follow a similar morning routine as the day before, minus the burnt bagel. She kisses me goodbye before she leaves for work, and I continue to get myself ready for my day of treatment. As I’m finishing getting ready, my phone starts to ring, it was my mom letting me know she was here to pick me up. I pet Blue and Bruce and tell them I’d see them later and off I go.

After checking in, I’m brought back into the other treatment room today. They tell me to take my pick of chairs, and today I opted for one in a far corner hoping to find some quietness for my nap. The nurse overseeing me starts asking me how I was feeling, and I tell her how I was tired and how I got nauseous and that I threw up a little the night before. She asks if I took my prescription, which I did. She goes and talks to someone who I couldn’t see out in the hall, and when she comes back, she tells me they’ll give me some more nausea medicine on top of what I already have, and another, but much smaller, dose of the steroid. Then we proceed with the treatment. Starting off with the 1 liter of fluids to get my organs flushed out and primed for the drugs. Today and the rest of the week would be different from Monday. I wouldn’t be getting all three of the chemo drugs, just 2. I would only be receiving the Cisplatin and the Etoposide. At this point I started to realize just how boring it would be to read the same thing every day that I’m here. I figured I’d take a little time to further explain what exactly I am receiving while I’m here (so much for my nap). As I mentioned yesterday, I am receiving a chemo treatment known as BEP, which my doctors tell me is very aggressive. BEP is composed of Bleomycin, Etoposide, and Cisplatin (Platinol). To further break these down,

Bleomycin: Is an anti-cancer chemotherapy drug that is classified as an antitumor antibiotic. It is used to treat squamos cell cancers such as: testicular, ovarian, melanoma, sarcoma, Hodgkin’s, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma cancers. It can be given intravenously by the veins in your arm or by the port, which is the method that I receive it. While most people won’t experience all of the side effects of Bleomycin, some of these side effects include fever and chills, various skin reactions like reddening, darkening, peeling, and ulceration, nail thickening and banding, hair loss, nausea, vomiting, weight loss, poor appetite, mouth sores, lung issues including pneumonitis pulmonary fibrosis. Some serious, but uncommon, side effects can lead to heart attacks and strokes.

Etoposide: Is another anti-cancer chemotherapy drug but is classified as plant alkaloid. Etoposide is used for testicular, bladder, prostate, lung, stomach, uterine cancers. Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, mycosis fungoides, Kaposi's sarcoma, Wilm's tumor, rhabdomyosarcoma, Ewing's sarcoma, neuroblastoma, and brain tumors. It can be taken in either pill form or by IV. Etoposide is an irritant, so going through a port will save your veins from being burned. Some side effects include low white blood cell count, low platelet count, hair loss, fertility issues, nausea and vomiting, low blood pressure, mouth sores, diarrhea, poor appetite, metallic tastes in your mouth during infusion, numbness in your toes and fingers, and there is a slight risk of developing blood cancer later on in life.

Cisplatin: Is an anti-cancer chemotherapy drug that is classified as an alkylating agent. It is used to treat advanced bladder cancer, metastatic ovarian and testicular cancers, testicular, ovarian, bladder, head and neck, esophageal, small and non-small cell lung, breast, cervical, stomach and prostate cancers. Also, to treat Hodgkin's and non-Hodgkin's lymphomas, neuroblastoma, sarcomas, multiple myeloma, melanoma, and mesothelioma. Cisplatin can only be administered by IV and is another irritant. Side effects of cisplatin are nausea and vomiting, low blood counts, kidney toxicity, hearing loss or ringing in the ears, low magnesium and potassium levels, numbness and tingling in extremities, loss of appetite, metallic tastes, and hair loss.

My chemo treatment is at least 3 cycles of receiving these drugs. Each cycle being made up of 3 weeks. The first week of each cycle I am here Monday through Friday, from anywhere between 8 am and 3 pm. During the first week of each cycle, Monday I get all three drugs, and the rest of the week is just the Etoposide and Cisplatin. Then the next two weeks of each cycle, I receive the Bleomycin on just Monday, with the rest of the week off. Then it starts all over again. During this time, they will be taking blood samples to measure how my organs are functioning and to see where my blood cell counts at to see if I’ll need any other treatments to replenish them. At the very end of my treatment, I’ll undergo more scans and blood work to see how the treatment worked and go from there.

When I got home, it was an uneventful night. The extra nausea medicine was doing its job, so I laid down and took a nap until dinner time. Shortly after dinner I was fast asleep again until the next morning.

Day 3: I woke up feeling much more rested. Again, looking at my Whoop app I saw that I was 48% recovered this morning.

We’re moving on up in the world now!

With some more rest, I felt ready to take on the day ahead of me. I noticed that my appetite was starting to decrease. I wasn’t as hungry in the morning like I usually am. I settled for some water and a protein bar. On the way to the hospital, I grabbed a coffee and a bacon egg and cheese to get something a little denser into my stomach. Something new I had noticed today was hiccups. I thought it was just from drinking or eating something too fast, but the nurse overseeing me today told me that it could be side effect from the medicine, and that we’d keep an eye on it and if it got worse, they could give me something for it. I guess there really is a pill out there for everything now adays. After lunch today, which I opted for the turkey sandwich and the spicy chicken soup, I began to feel tired. With the sleepiness quickly overtaking me, I realized as to how much this was kicking my butt. I try to fight it off, but soon gave in and tried to nap while I was here. Now if you’ve ever had the pleasure of sleeping near me, you’ll know that I am very much so a twitcher when I’m falling asleep. When I laid back, I didn’t even think about this, but maybe 30 minutes into my nap I had a violent twitch of my arms shooting straight up into the air, startling myself awake. Realizing what just happened, I scanned the room to see if anyone had noticed, and I luckily seemed to be in the clear of that embarrassing moment. I lay back down and continue trying to take my little nap before leaving for the day. Once I was home for the day, I was able to last a few hours before I dozed off on the couch. I must have been exhausted because Shannon said I was eating my dinner with my eyes closed that night.

Day 4: My eyes shot open, I looked around and I was in bed. I didn’t remember moving to the bed last night. I looked at Shannon, she was still asleep. My heart sank a little bit while I looked at her, I didn’t want her feeling as if she was alone. The past two night I fell asleep on her, and she was just there taking care of me. I really don’t know what I’d do without her. She is my everything, and I understand I’m going through a lot right now, but that it’s a lot to put on her as well. I want to do more to support her through this as well. She can’t carry everything, its not fair to her. I let Blue out and start to get ready for the day. Shannon wakes up and she begins getting ready for work.  She makes us both smoothies for breakfast, which was delicious, but that much fluid before receiving my fluids I get during treatment set me up for day full of trips to and from the bathroom. The rest of the day was uneventful. I went home and struggled to stay awake until Shannon got home. We enjoyed dinner together and went to the couch to catch up on some tv shows, I didn’t last too long before I was fast asleep.

It only took 11 hours of sleep, but we made it to the green!

Day 5: Today I decided to give something else a try instead of writing while I’m hooked up to the IV stand. I noticed earlier in the week that I had difficulty concentrating on writing. I also took note that everything not only felt cloudy when I was trying to write, but it also looked a little cloudy. It felt like I was kind of just sitting in some fog. Today, I was going to read. I had been bringing books with me every day so far, but I hadn’t gotten into any of them yet. The only thing I brought with me was the book so that I would stick with this decision. I read more than half the book I brought, which I thought was good for not really reading in recent history. I also wasn’t sure if it was my body getting used to the drugs or if it was the reading, but today I didn’t feel like I was lost in the fog. I felt great actually, it was the most awake I had felt all week. I was going into the weekend on a good note and setting a good tone for the next week.

Ending the week in the green, setting myself up for success for next week!

Source for the information on the chemotherapy drugs was www.chemocare.com