my oh my...

Wow, what a week this has been! A week I hope I forget soon! One good thing is that I am writing this post with both my right and left hand... that is a big accomplishment. This treatment was a really hard one for me. Not only did I have all the "regular" chemo symptoms like nausea, vomiting, thrush (again), bone pain, full body aches... but I woke up at 4:00 AM on Tuesday with a throbbing, aching arm.

A few days after my first treatment my left arm started aching. It wasn't horrible, but not fun. I talked to my doctor's nurse practitioner about it and she didn't think that my pain was related to getting chemo in my arm (ummm.... hello!) So I decided to do a little experiment and get the chemo for my second treatment in my right arm to see if the same thing happened.

Oh man... I'm so naive. I can't even believe that I did that. First of all they did the IV in a vein in my hand.... okay, take a minute and look at the vein in your hand... not the biggest vein in the world is it. The whole time that the Dacarbazine drug was dripping through my IV my arm just burned... for an hour! I should have had them stop right there but I didn't. Sure enough, that 4 AM wake up call a few days later would lead to the most painful week of my life. I wasn't able to fall asleep the next night until 6:00 AM because I was in so much pain. So that's what... 26 hours of being awake in agonizing pain. I was able to get some descent pain killers but when your in pain like this I think it takes more than pain killers to do anything. The pain killers took some of the edge off but never got rid of the pain. Since the IV went in my hand my whole entire arm was affected. I couldn't even hold a fork in my hand to eat a meal. It's been bad... I'm so mad that I had to get to this point in order to have something done about it.

So I told my doc that I would under no circumstances be getting chemo through my arm veins ever again. Funny enough... they did not fight me on it. The scheduled me to have a port put in first thing Monday morning. I'm so glad! I'm just hoping that the pain in my arm goes away soon. It's been so hard. The reason my doctor didn't want to order a port in the first place is because he doesn't like having foreign objects put inside of people's bodies because it can cause serious infection. True... but I like being able to brush my teeth, or not be in constant pain on top of all the other crappy side affects you get with chemo.

I'm pretty bummed that I probably wont have any "good days" with this treatment cycle. Port goes in Monday... I have to be put under. I hate being under anesthesia... it takes me a few days to snap out of it. Then chemo again on Thursday. They've told me that they will be doing it through the port on Thursday even though I will most likely have a bruise the size of a soft ball on my chest where the port is. I can't imagine that's going to feel too great.

I hope that after this horrible experience I finally have things figured out so that the next treatment wont be so bad. I have a new anti nausea medication now that actually works... so hopefully no 1:00 AM trips to kneel to the throne... I have some good pain pills so hopefully they help with the bone pain... I have the thrush medication ready to go so that at the first sign of thrush I can start that... and I have Nurse Trent who likes to nag me to make sure that I'm on top of taking my medication...

This too shall pass... right?