Well, 1st week of chemo over....

Sitting in the office right now for another 4 hours and figured I would update this a little in case some of you are wondering what it is like.

Chemo is an interesting way to cure you (and my oncologist is going for the cure by the way, hence the severe schedule I am on).

Chemo attacks fast growing cells in the body so they cannot replicate beyond a certain point where no matter what you do, they will take over your body. Now you have to realize your body is very strong and it might take a while before you feel the effects of this poison coursing through your veins. The first 4 days I actually felt that this was not going to be such a big deal beyond some general discomfort and nausea. And then of course Friday comes along and you realize why they do not do this for more then 5 days in a row.

I started the day with a huge drop in blood pressure making you feel like your heart's going to pop out of your chest and even though you are given 5lbs of fluid through an IV every day (yep, that much!) you still end up de-hydrated on the 5th day if you are not careful. And naturally, with my size and metabolism as well as the steroids they give me, I did not have enough fluids in my system to handle the anti-nausea medication very well. Stuff works great but the side effect is cramps in the muscles surrounding your lungs (they are targeting the lungs since, of course, that's where the cancer jumped to).

Now these are not your average cramps, you might want to picture the Hulk wrapping his arms around you and squeezing for a good 30 seconds :)

When the nurses saw me squirm they quickly took me off the meds, gave me more electrolytes and more fluids and about 45 minutes later I was back to normal, albeit sore as hell in my chest. No nausea though,... yippee..

After 5 hours of observation I was allowed to go home and rest. Thank God, now all I could do now was wait for any other side effects to take place.

On Saturday a nurse comes to your home and gives you a shot to bring up the white blood cell count (which chemo destroys) to prevent an infection from killing me before the chemo is done with the cancer (or me :)). This shot stimulates your bone marrow to produce more of these cells and you can experience "growth" pains while on it. Well duh. The rest of the day I felt like someone kicked me in the liver but by the evening I was fine and though exhausted, I was able to fall asleep.

Now, I was warned for the effects that take place two days after your chemo week but boy does it take you by surprise anyway. Remember I said it attacks the fast growing cells? Well, you have those in your eyes, ears, nose and mouth as well, not just your stomach (they are somewhere else as well but I do not want to make the guys cringe too much! ha-ha).

So you wake up with blurry vision, a terrible ringing in your ears (still not gone, and I now know what dogs feel like with those whistles), a constant need to clean my nose (which on the inside now feels as soft as a baby's bottom, you can trust me on that one :)) and perpetually dry mouth. Nothing tastes and smells the same, by the way. When I open the refrigerator I am immediately not hungry anymore since the cascade of smells coming at me is too much too bear. Even bread smells funny. No biggie, this will all be better at the end of the week and it will be back to normal at the end of next week and then, guess what? They are going to do it to me all over again :)

Well, I survived week 1, lost about 8 lbs but no hair :)

No sessions for the rest of the week. Just resting and a few tests maybe. With a bit of luck I get my taste buds back, 'cause I am starving at the moment.



All the best,

Marc