We don't want to inject tiny concrete particles into your heart...

Okay, so where were we.... Blood-taking nurse had done her damage and walked me into the smaller infusion room. They have two. The first one is quite large, with about 15-20 recliners. Both times, I end up up in the smaller one that has about 6 beds. It's nice. So I go into the the smaller one, pick my recliner of choice and meet my chemo nurse. She pulls out my port and hooks me up to my first drug. For the first four chemo cycles, I get four different drugs. The first two are mixed in one IV bag: Aloxi and Decadron. These aren't actually the chemo drugs. They are a couple of medications to either prevent (Aloxi) or relieve (Decadron) nausea. They give these to you first in case you are someone that is going to react to the chemo drugs pretty quickly.

I had to explain to chemo-nurse right up front that I was a librarian, and therefore a bit of a book nerd so I was going to ask her a lot of questions. I made her show me the name of the drug in each bag before she hooked me up to it. I knew all the drugs before but this time I came prepared with my little mini library so I could read about them as they were being pumped into my veins. So after she showed me the drug I pulled out my book about my drugs and started reading.

After my veins had sucked up all the nausea meds, chemo-nurse came over with the second drug. This was chemo drug #1, Adriamycin. It's the one that looks like Kool-Aid that makes you pee red for a day or so. Nice. This is also the one that they have to administer to by pushing it into the IV through a syringe, rather than just hooking it up to a drip line. That is because with a syringe, there is less chance of leakage. Leakage would be bad with this drug. It's the one that can eat through tissue, hence chemo-nurse having to don full HazMat gear to administer it. She showed me the name of the drug and I and sat back and to read about this particular toxic waste being injected into my blood stream.

Third and final drug was Cytoxin. Also a chemo drug. This one went into a drip line. I noticed that in between each drug, she flushed my IV line with a saline solution. I'm not sure why, but this childhood memory flashed into my head of my mom getting annoyed with us at the dinner table when we whined about our food touching on our plates. She would say, "It all ends up in the same place. What difference does it make if it is touching before it gets there?" As a little side note, I used this same reasoning on my husband once when he got all disgusted after I dished up his dinner because certain things were touching. He looked at me like I was a freak of nature, but as a girl that grew up in a family who thought it was normal to mix your roast beef, potatoes and gravy, and corn all together before eating, it made perfect sense. In fact it was my favorite breakfast meal to have pancakes, topped with a fried egg, applesauce on top of that and maple syrup over top of everything. Yum! (I'm adding that one as a bonus because I'm pretty sure that a good majority of my Erickson family is in the process of dry heaving right now.)   :)

So, anyway, chemo-nurse was making sure nothing was touching before it went in. I asked her why. I'm so glad I did. She said that some of the chemo drugs react with each other in odd ways so they want to make sure that the line is completely clear of one drug before they inject another. She went on to say (this is the good part) that once she actually witnessed when a drug was administered into an IV without the prior drug being completely flushed from the line first and there was some sort of chemical reaction in the line and the two drugs solidified into a concrete like substance. It was so hard that when they bent the IV tube it snapped. "So we flush," she said. "We don't want to be sending small particles of concrete right into your heart." (My port catheter runs up from my chest, over my collar bone and down an artery (or vein?) almost right into my heart) No we don't, I thought. "Thanks for flushing," I told her.

So that was it for chemo cycle number two. I think this one will be a little easier than the first. I learned a lot with the first cycle. I think I've figured out how to better manage the side effects of the anti-nausea meds through some changes in diet and exercise routine, which should alleviate some of the discomfort. I'm also going to talk with my oncologist about the current drug regimen to see if there are some drugs that I don't really need. They were really worried about the nausea and so they loaded the anti-nausea meds on me. I'm not sure I need all of them, so we'll have a little discussion next week. But, that can wait for another post.

I went up to the hospital today for my $6000 Neulasta injection. Honestly, who gets all that money?!? It's the drug that kick starts white blood cell production, since the chemo killed most of them off. It allows them to keep my chemo treatments on schedule and close together. Without it, they would have to wait sometimes months between chemo treatments, seriously decreasing the effectiveness of the the chemo. I had an interesting conversation with that nurse about the changes in Cancer treatments in even just the last five years. She mentioned that she'd been in the medical field, specifically Cancer treatment, for 15 years and the things they did 15 years ago seem barbaric to her now. Again, probably more information than you wanted, but like I said, I'm a nerd, so if you're going to going to read my updates, I hope you don't mind a few educational tidbits thrown in there.

After I came home, my friend Darlene was at my house and she and my husband whipped up a slightly belated Thanksgiving dinner while I went in my bedroom and took a nap. It was really quite a lovely day. YAY for the drug that made it possible for me to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner with my family one day after chemo! BOO to the same drug that made me want to have THREE helpings of everything! (See? Steroids. It's the whole love/hate thing,) Although I'm happy to announce that I limited myself to just one helping. Except for the blueberry pie. Any of you who have had the blessed opportunity to taste my husband's homemade blueberry pie couldn't fault me for that one indulgence. Hands down, the best blueberry pie on the face of the planet.

That's all I've got for tonight. Thanks everyone for your concern and well wishes. It really helps more than you know.