Let the chemo begin!

With eight weeks post surgery and everything healing well they gave the official go ahead to begin chemotherapy. There are many many types of chemotherapy each having some not very pleasant side effects to have to endure. The oncologists tailor your treatment to your unique individual needs in my case this time they will be administering a single drug known as docetaxel. This would be a different regime of chemotherapy to what I was given six years ago which was a combination of two drugs called EC90.

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Docetaxol (taxotere) 

Treatment was to start at 1pm so arriving at 12:45 as requested. This time there was to be no cold cap as I had opted out on this occassion, it may work for some and I know this time it's a different sort of chemo but my experience of trying to hold onto my hair last time turned out to be quite unsuccessful and very much an unpleasant procedure, which I would willingly endure if the rates of success were to fair better!

I was all booked in and shortly after was shown to my seat. With my picc line at the ready there would be no anxious moments of them struggling to get a good vein or the need to insert a cannula! I was good to go! Just like having a USB port all they needed to do was to connect me up! 

First job was a drip to flush the picc line, this didn't take long at all and then I was ready for the next drip. This would be an anti sickness drug to help prevent nausea one of the side effects from the chemo.This took about 15 minutes to go through then a bag containing the docetaxel was hung up and covered with a black bag to prevent the light getting to it as this one is light sensitive. I was connected up to it again through my picc line and this was to take about an hour to go through. 

With various medications to take at specific times some starting 24 hours before chemo, others that needed to be started 24 hours after chemo and with the district nurses booked to start administering and teaching me how to self administer Filgrastim injections ( these injections are to boost the white blood cells) I'm happy to say that apart from the fact that I have only had 21 hours sleep in the course of a week and suffered some constipation due to the medications side effects, the first week after my first chemo has gone very well.

Sunday evening I missed a dosage of painkillers as I was feeling fine and the aching in my joints (side effects of the Filgrastim injections) was just in the background. Hopefully I have learned and I won't be doing that again as in the early hours of Monday morning I suffered chronic pain throughout the whole of my body, it was horrendous, I can only describe that it felt like my entire body was being crushed! At 4am I made myself some porridge as the painkillers are to be taken with food! Gladly after about 40 minutes the pain slowly began to subside and with medications taken I had managed to get back on top of things. 

A friend had arranged a lunch date with me for the following afternoon which I had been looking forward to and I wasn't going to let a missed dose of meds spoil things! We had a lovely afternoon together, it's such a boost to see different faces and have time out!