First Day of Chemo

Had to be at oncologist today at 9AM.  Mom picked me up and soon after 9 we met with Dr. Draper.  He informed me that my staging for my cancer is IIIB (the B means that I had symptoms such as night sweats, fatigue, weight loss, etc).  The cancer is not in my bones and that is good news.  He reassured me that I have over a 95% chance for cure. He said I would need to go for 6 cycles (that is 6 months) He said after 4 cycles they will do another PET scan to see if cancer is gone.  If that is the case they do the other two cycles as a precaution. If the cancer is still present then he said we will talk about the options at that point in time.

I asked the doctor when to expect my hair to fall out. He said probably after first cycle. So we are looking at around March.  (Yay......NOT)  Oh well. I will take it for what it is. I need to get better and this one side effect that I have to put up with.

So after meeting with Dr. Draper it was time to start my Chemo.  My nurses name today was Julia. She was super awesome.  She put the huber needle (I call him Hubey, Dolly's boyfriend) into my port.  I thought this was going to really hurt but it didn't at all.  First they put saline in the line. Next was a small test dose of one of the drugs Bleomycin to be sure there were no allergic reaction because this drug apparently can cause some bad reactions.  After the test the gave me the rest of the Bleomycin. This all took over an hour. The next drug was a push drug (not a drip) and that was the Adriamycin (this is drug is red! and guess what it turns red haha)  After this drug they gave me a drug called Vinblastine this is also a push drug. Then the last drug was called Dacarbazine which is a drip drug (these take much longer, like over an hour).  Between Vinblastine and the Dacarbazine, I starting getting a rash on my stomach and right under my bra.  Appartently I had a slight reaction to one of these two drugs  we are not sure which one so I had to to have a dose of Benedryl. After that I was able to finsh off the Dacarbazine. They said next time they will spread out the drugs to better pinpoint which one I am allergic to and give me the Benedryl before that one. 

So of course after getting the Benedryl even though it was a small amount I fell asleep for the last hour and a half or so.

We were all finished around to 2PM and I was sent on my merry way.  I was given two drugs for nausea. One to take tomorrow and Sunday. And one to take as needed. 

Well at this point I can't thing of anything else to say. 

1 down 11 to go!!!!