My Treatment Plan

I was looking back over my blog and have realized that I never explained my chemo treatment! My treatment plan consists of 6 cycles of treatment. Each cycle is 3 weeks long, which adds up to 18 weeks of treatment. And I get treatment once a week, which adds up to 18 treatments. Which amounts to about 4 1/2 months of this stuff. So if you include my surgery and port placement that means I am spending half of 2010 killing cancer. Holla. At least we hope.

Day One: For about the first hour I am there I get a few things that help my body to take the chemo. The nurse sticks a needle in my port and then attaches an IV to get all of these drugs: Steroids (not the jacked up kind, the anti-inflammatory kind). Pepcid (for my stomach). Some kind of anti-nausea stuff. And Benedryl (funny story about that, lets just say I have a reputation in the office with my benedryl). As hard as I try, I CANNOT stay awake when they give me that drug! During this time we watch Regis and Kelly. Usually I can make it to the end of the show before I go to sleep. Then I get the chemo. Taxol and Carboplatin. Each one takes about an hour and fifteen minutes. The whole time they're running saline through my system, too, so I have to pee a lot. I mean a lot. And that process is fun because I unplug my machine and wheel it to the room with me. It reminds me of ET... Then the saline runs by itself for about another 30 minutes and we get to go home! So the process takes about 4-5 hours.

Week One: Generally I start to feel the side effects a few days later - on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. This means nausea, aches, fatigue... I also return to the office a few times during the week for various things: shots to keep my blood counts high enough for treatment and blood work to keep track of it all.

Day Eight: One week later I get another round of chemo. Same story as before, only this time I just get the Taxol and we're out by lunch time!

Week Two: Though I still get more tired on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I don't usually feel nauseous or achy. Although more recently I have started to have some problems with nausea on these weeks too. But it doesn't even compare to week one. A more well known side effect of the Taxol is hair loss. And I am back for more shots and tests during this week also.

Day Fifteen: Same as day eight.

Week Three: Same as week two.

Now, this past week I had a Day One kind of treatment. And I dread these because of how terrible it usually makes me feel. But this go round was so much better. I think we've figured out the drug combinations to control the nausea. And the aches. So I still got pretty tired but I was actually able to sleep this time. And read. And watch movies. During Cycle 3 I really thought I was not going to make it. I know this seems dramatic but it was really rough. But after making it through the first week of Cycle 4, I feel like I can do this! Wooo!