This day started off a little weird. I woke up early, around 3:30-4 am and came upstairs. I cleaned a bit then got cleaned up myself and got dressed. Patti was quite the opposite and wanted to sleep more (just another 5 minutes please!). Usually it's quite the opposite, maybe it has to do with her 'big day'. After forcing her out of bed I went to get gas and some breakfast for us and came back to them halfway done getting ready. A little while later and we were dropping Aiden off at preschool and were on our way to her first chemo session.
I am going to stop right here and say something about what not to do the night before cancer. I was shown this video and it hit me right in the feels and is not good for someone with a spouse that has cancer.
Patti found out the day before that she was not getting the 'Adcertus' chemo drug and that she would be receiving the standard 'Bleomycin' instead. Even though she isn't getting that new one, she is still in the experimental program so they can compare the effectiveness of both drugs. That means two things:
- She will not get a lot of extra tests
- If she was taking Adcertus she would have extra blood draws and other tests so the sponsors could get extra results for their study.
- Her chemo will be slightly more regimented than normal.
- She will have more paperwork from time to time to tell Dr. Herzan how she is feeling
- The drugs will be administered in the order of ABVD
- They wanted to do a Bleomycin test (I'll explain that later) first, but because she's in the program she had to have the Adriamycin first.
- There's an extra vitals test which has to be administered an hour after all the drugs have been given, again because of the program.
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| Me: Let the Fun begin Patti: The suspense is killing me Me: No, that would be the cancer Patti: OOOOoooooo |
We checked in at just before 8 am at the Masonic Cancer Center and had the needle connected to Patti's port for blood draws and chemo. After the blood draws were done we met with I think our main chemo nurse: 'Tonya' and she went over a few things, not a lot since we already had a lot of the information from Dr. Barachova and Dr. Herzan. We went over the anti-nausea medications that we would be getting (I will talk about them later). While we were meeting with her Dr Herzan who is in charge of the study came in with more paper work and collected previous ones.
When that was all over we waited for over an hour to be called up to the third floor for chemo. Our Nurse for the day was Amy and she welcomed us to our curtained off room and talked us through the process. Patti would be getting the four drugs: ABVD in that order so they matched up with the experimental drug process of AAVD. She also would be getting Vinblastine instead of Vincristine but they are basically the same drug. Before we began they took her vitals to make sure she was alive. Then they pumped a small amount of saline through the port to flush it. The most interesting part about it, which Patti hates it when I call it interesting and not disgusting, is the fact that she instantly could taste it as soon as it entered her blood stream. What it does is make her have a metallic taste in her mouth which I'm told is not very pleasant and can be counteracted by something citrus or minty because they are usually very strong as well. She then was given an anti-nausea medication that will last for for a few days. After that came the chemo drugs YIPPEE!!!!
The first drug is Adriamycin, it is red in color and this one has to be 'pushed' through. The nurse came in with two large syringes without needles because at this time Patti was hooked up to the IV unit and the syringes would connect to that instead of directly to the port.
With each drug the nurse has to double check with another nurse that the drugs are the one for the patient. They read off the patient's name, date of birth and the drug #. It is very quick and professional and insures the patient's safety.
Getting back to the process, like I said this drug needed to be 'pushed' through. This is because it can cause burns if it leaks out and they want to get it all in there quickly. What they do when they 'push' it is pull back in the syringe a bit to pull some blood out, push some of the drug in and rinse and repeat until the syringe is completely empty. They then ask how the patient is doing and proceed with the second one. It took no more than 5-10 minutes until Patti had the first drug done and over with.
Between drug #1 and drug #2 Patti used the Potty hahahahahaha. She has to drink 64 ounces of water a day, she actually was ahead of the curve so luckily the IV unit is very portable.
Bleomycin is the second drug. This is the one that can cause lung infection and deterioration in 10% of patients. This is why they test vitals and part of the introduction into the chemo process was the stressing of: if you feel unnaturally winded, if your short of breath, etc. call us ASAP! If we weren't in the program, we would have gotten this first because of the process of taking it the first time. The normal dosage is 24 units (I don't exactly know how much is a unit, that's just what they said). The first time they give you Bleomycin they give you 2 units of the drug first and then make you wait an hour to see if you have an allergic reaction to it. After the hour was up and Patti felt cheery and perky, they continued giving her the other 22 units. It took about 20 minutes more to go through it.
The third drug was Vinblastine and it was gone before we knew it. They came in after the Bleomycin was gone, asked Patti how she was doing, hooked the new drug up and within 15 minutes it was emptied and in her system. This drug is one they use a gravity feed for. But wait, aren't all IV's gravity fed? Well with this drug they had it pump in very fast, basically having the IV pump push it through her system because this is another one that may cause burns.
The last drug was Dacarbazine and it was a regular IV drip baggy that took about 45 minutes to be completely used up. This was really anti climatic since the other ones were so darn quick and because of it we actually got kind of bored waiting for this one to finish.
A couple things happened while Patti was getting the drugs:
- Between each drug the nurse would hook up the saline syringe to the port, not to pump more saline in, but to pull back just a bit to see blood to make sure the port was clear and there were no blockages.
- We got her chemo schedule
- We got Patti's other anti-nausea medications
- Dexamethasone: A regimented drug she needs to take certain days after each chemo treatment session. It helps fight any nausea or dizziness symptoms
- Prochlorperazine: This is a drug she uses as needed for nausea and vomiting
- Lorazapam: Another 'as needed' drug for anxiety, nausea, vomiting and for sleep
For the the last two she needs to find the combination through basically trial and error that works best for her to combat those symptoms and call the nurses if she needs help with proper combos. As a non-gamer I doubt she knows really how to use an effective combo to knock anything out.So after the chemo drugs were all in her system, Patti had to wait for an hour. This is part of the program she is in for that new drug that she didn't get. For a long boring hour we waited until the nurse was allowed to check her vitals again.
The reason for part of the tedium of the chemo process was that the wifi on the third floor, you know....where people spend a whole day getting chemo...is very spotty at best. It took me 4 hours to watch a 2 hour movie. You'd think a place where patients need to spend long hours, they'd make the wifi a bit better so people can better distract themselves, especially since their TV channel selection is horrible. How about we raise money so they can afford to put a few signal boosters in that area!!
Since we got the chemo schedule, we were allowed to leave immediately after the vitals were taken. There are no side effects that take effect quickly so Patti right now is her normal happy self. Most of them will take 3-4 days to manifest if they do at all so now it's just a waiting game. Her next two chemo dates are December 11th and December 27th both early morning. The second one will be very similar to this one with her getting vitals before and an hour after. The third one and the ones following will be much shorter.
Thank you for reading!
PS: We just realized something, I'm not going to go back and fix this post because I love adding PS's. The reason why Patti is so happy and cheerful is because the anti-nausea medication that Patti received is a type of steroid that pumps her up and makes her feel more energetic. That's why she's so abnormally perky right now. Thank you Robyn for pointing this out, she was kinda freaking me out.
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