On Chemo Days

I'm sorry for the LONG post. This post is structured a little differently. I'm trying a little "say it like it is" type post.

All Chemo days are similar. I wake up. I eat breakfast (unless I am NPO). I get ready. We (me and either my mom or dad) drive to Temple. At the clinic we are asked a general array of questions (in the past 7 days have y'all experienced any nausea, vomiting, loss of taste or smell, etc.). We answer yes to nausea and vomiting, but only because those are both chemo related. Then they take our temperatures. After that we are sent on our way.

Once we arrive at the 5th floor we head to the hem-oc (hematology oncology) waiting room. We are checked in. PBS Kids is always playing. Sometimes it's Cyberchase, other times it's Sesame Street or some show I don't know. I laugh at the shows and remember when I was obsessed with Elmo and Ruff Ruffman. Lately all PBS has been playing (at least at the time I'm there) is Arthur. We wait for a nurse to come out and call us back.

The nurse takes us to a giant vitals station. I slide my shoes off and step onto an elephant sized scale. It beeps and I walk off and over to the ruler on the wall, where the nurse grabs my height and then has me sit in a chair. She straps a blood pressure cuff on me and takes my temperature. After that, we are taken to a room. The nurse always compliments my socks.

Our room isn't necessarily private. While they do have something covering the doorway, it's really just a curtain. There is a bench for parents and a big chair for me. They have a counter that houses a computer. There is a small t.v in the corner.

It only takes a couple minutes before another nurse comes in and takes us to a "port accessing" room. Here I lay down on a small bed-type thing. I unzip the zippers on one of my special port access shirts. The nurse takes off the bandage I have over my port, which keeps the lidocaine cream I have on the port from ruining the shirt. Lidocaine is a numbing cream. The nurse wipes the cream off and cleans the port site. We wait 2 minutes while the cleaning solution dries. Then, the nurse feels around for my port. After finding it, she (for lack of a better word), stabs me with a 1.5 inch needle. It doesn't hurt that bad. Once it is all said and done, sometimes they draw labs. But, they always flush my port (run saline through to clean it), and put a sterile bandage over the port needle. I am sent back to my room.

After waiting some more, the nurse comes in with my chemo and zofran (a nausea medication). They (for lack of a better word) inject the zofran into my port and then hook me up to an I.V machine. After calling another nurse in, they double check that I am in fact Adeline Jansson and that I am receiving chemo. Then, they attach the chemo bag to the I.V machine and start the treatment.

The infusions last a varying amount of time. The shortest infusion has lasted 15 minutes, compared to the longest infusion being 2 hours. Then there is the rare time when I go to hospital for IT (in my spine) chemo. On the days when I have both IT and IV chemo, we usually take care of IT chemo first. I get accessed at clinic, and then we walk across the sidewalk to the hospital. They ask us the same questions and then we wait for the "bouncer" at the front desk to check us in and let us back. 

We arrive on the 2nd floor of the hospital and wait once again for somebody to take us back to pre-op. I am asked some questions by a nurse, and am given an allergy band for my allergy to cefepime. Once the doctors are ready, another nurse rolls me into a procedure room. While they prep for the chemo, I am given propofol (or as the anesthesiologist calls it, "magic milk") . This stuff knocks me out in about 2 seconds flat. I actually don't quite know what happens during IT, all I know is that I wake up after with a band aid on my back. 

At the end of every clinic visit, they always inject a heparin lock into my port, which stops the port from clogging. Then I am deaccessed (they take the needle out of me), and I am sent home.

On the way home we grab lunch at a drive-thru. Sometimes (read: most if not all times) I get sick. But, we always have plenty of emesis bags in the car. Once we get home, I crash either on the couch or my bed and take a much-deserved nap.