it's done! day one of treatment is over! yay! now only eleven more to go.... it's amazing, i woke up today with the most overwhelming sense of excitement - it was the first day that i could work to fight cancer! while there's a lot ahead of me, i'm moving forward now, and it feels wonderful...
i know many of you are wondering what this is all like, so i'll try to pepper in some updates on my experience, although, i don't think too much about the medical side of this...i've got too many lessons to learn...i'll let my doctors handle the details.
the day was relatively easy. the routine is: check in, have blood drawn (to check counts), wait, see the oncologist, head to the treatment room, wait for your drugs to be mixed, get the IV all hooked up, get anti-nausea stuff, the nurse comes and 'pushes' two of my drugs (using a syringe directly into the IV), then a ten minute drip of one, and then the big, long two hour drip with the last one. that's it! the big updates from this appointment...i had my bone marrow biopsy, and i'm not even going to pretend that it wasn't the most excrutiatingly painful thing i've gone through this far - totally worth it though, as it concludes my very thorough pre-treatment tests. once you have those drugs in you, you can't go back, and i'm totally thankful to have so many 'baselines'...i truly trust the hands i'm in with my oncologist, and it feels wonderful to not worry. and, while my oncologist wants to wait on putting in my medi-port (a little port that goes under my skin, attached to a tube that goes into a major vein closer to your heart to save your arms), the nurses have a different plan and want it in as soon as it can be done...so they'll talk it out next week and let me know when that surgery will be. last update, looks like i'm in for six months, not four, of chemotherapy. while it may seem terrible, fear not, with every cycle my chance of it coming back is less, so if six months is what i have to do, i'll do it.
it was my intention to also share my latest incredible cancer driven perspective with you, but, alas, today's events have left me totally exhausted. you'll have to hang on to the edge of your seats, which i expect each of you to actually do...
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Hi,
ReplyDeleteMy 19 yr old son just had his first ABVD on Fri, Oct 2. He had a some difficulty yesterday but is doing better today. His Hodgkins was stage IIIB. The main lymph nodes involved are those around the spleen. He was pretty anemic too. Good luck with your treatments.