To The Left, To The Left

Boy, do I hate that Beyonce song, but I gotta admit, it's sort of appropriate, since last night was the first time since LAST YEAR that I was able to sleep on my left side. As I am a side sleeper, the past few months have been rather restrictive in terms of sleep positions. I've even resorted to [gasp!] sleeping on my back.

Of course, this new change was perhaps related to the fact that I got up FOUR times during the night to go, er, powder my nose. Apparently my kidneys were working overtime to get rid of the many chemicals coursing through my body, so I finally gave up trying to sleep around 6:30am.

Yesterday's CMF chemotherapy cocktail consisted of:

1. cyclophosphamide, a/k/a Cytoxan
   
2. methotrexate, a/k/a Mexate
   
3. fluorouracil ("5-FU" or 5-fluorouracil), a/k/a Adrucil
   

There is a bewildering variety of methods and schedules for administering CMF, but I am on "Schedule C" (if you follow the CMF link above, as opposed to the individual drug links) which consists of one continuous IV dose every 3 weeks.

Mercifully, yesterday chemo nurse was wonderfully skilled in IV insertions, since it went into a vein on the top of my right hand (due to the lymph node biopsy, for the rest of my life, all blood pressure readings and any injections will have to be taken/done on my RIGHT side), and it could have thus hurt like hell. I [heart] her!



(By the way, the photo on the right is the Royal Orchid Sheraton in Bangkok, where my sweetie stayed last week. Spiffy looking, eh? He'll be staying somewhere else in Bangkok next week, on his way back. I miss him... but hope he's having a splendid time with his diving compadres in the middle of the Gulf of Thailand. He deserves his Calgon time! And now we leave the eye candy e-mailed to me by my engineer before he flew off to Ko Samui, and bring you back to our regularly scheduled medical mess.)

Just call me The Human Pincushion, since I've been poked at continuously since December, and will continue to be a target until July. Here's what my chemo Fridays will consist of, if yesterday was any gauge:

• 10:15 - check in at reception & get a blood test -- if my white blood cell counts are too low, treatment will be postponed; the blood techs poke the tip of your finger with a little pin, and not a use a hypodermic to get a vein, but this didn't really help since apparently the callous on my index finger made it hard to get the required amount of blood, and the tech squeezed my finger like a lemon (repeatedly!) in order to get enough blood...OW!!! If you think a tiny cut shouldn't hurt that much, YOU try squeezing blood out of one instead of staunching it.
  
• 10:30 - I meet with the oncologist (i.e., get called in and wait, while my sister flips through magazines in the waiting room) & get weighed -- I guess in the next visits we'll discuss blood test results, but the first week is a baseline meeting, since I haven't had my chemo-cocktail yet; she reviewed the results of my OncoType test with me, and tells me that my 16 score is on the high end of the low risk group (18 is the cutoff for the low risk category) -- Oooh! I forgot: I will part of a clinical study tracking chemo results! (i.e., my statistics will go into a vast pool of data) Yay for helping out other women!
  
• 11:20 - check in at the chemo desk -- like an a la carte restaurant, this initiates my "made to order meal" since the drugs are only drawn/ dispensed after you check in THERE, and the dosages are based on your weight, etc. I am informed the wait will be 45-60 min. My sister and I take the opportunity to dash outside and run errands: I go to a nearby library to grab an audiobook (no knitting, what with all of the needles) and she buys us sandwiches...thank gawd!
• 12:00 - check back in at the chemo desk -- no news as to ETA; we gobble down our lunches in the waiting area, along with lots of other patients.
• 12:45 - get called in to the chemo lounge -- that's what they call the set of little rooms where chemo is administered; each room has a sliding door, in case you want privacy, an easy chair, a visitor's chair, and a nurse's desk & chair
• 1:00 - the chemo nurse sets up the drip -- and pushes through the first 2 of the 3 drugs -- literally, she squeezes them down the IV tube -- but the 3rd drug is set to automatically drip in, along with a big ol' bag of saline [fluids, fuilds, and more fluids to help flush things through my system]; it's very funky to FEEL the cold medications flowing through my veins, I mean: have you ever FELT where your veins are INSIDE your body?!
• 2:30 - I'm done! -- my sister eventually gets someone to come and unhook me and we flee; we're so excited we leave without me remembering to pick up my anti-nausea meds (porchlorperazine, a/k/a Compazine -- also used as an anti-psychotic! bonus!) Whoops! BOY, was I sorry later that night in CT! Not gonna make THAT mistake next time. Went off to Duane Reade tonight and got them after my niece drove me back to the city.
• 3:00 - we hit the road and head for CT -- not surprisingly, I fall asleep in the car
  

Speaking of sleepy & done, I was going to include the mindbogglingly long list foods that are now VERBOTEN, but I am so pooped (and ITCHY -- damn, that's a side effect they didn't warn me about! ) that it will have to wait till tomorrow.