Cancer Treatment

My cancer treatment has finally started.  After being diagnosed in late November 2011, on January 16, 2012, I finally got hooked up to a permanent chemo flow and radiation zaps five days a week.

The chemo treatment is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  This is accomplished by piping it into me on a continuous basis.  The chemo itself is a dangerous combination of drugs that kills my veins and will involve a hazmat team if I spill it (except, as the nurses say, I'm the hazmat team).

To run the chemo into me, they've inserted a PICC line (peripherally inserted central catheter line) into the inside of my right bicep and it travels about a foot or so into my body, across my chest to my heart.  Technically, it stops about 3 mm shy of my heart.  The idea is that the chemicals can travel into my body without destroying the veins.  Upon release from this line right at the heart, the chemicals get immediately diluted, sucked up by the heart and distributed throughout my body.

I don't think they need to go everywhere but that's just how blood distribution works.  The chemicals are being used now to make the cells more receptive to radiation.  That's why I'm on chemo.

I carry a bottle of one week's supply of chemo chemicals on my hip like a less-than-enthusiastic jogger from the Running Room.  I wear it everywhere and it interferes with everything.  I eat meals with it, I sleep with it, I shower with it without getting it wet.  It's a pain in the ass. 

Radiation appointments are to be 15 minutes each.  My first radiation was right after they hooked me up with the chemo bottle on Monday.  It took longer.  It took 3.5 hours.  They weren't happy with the tattoo alignment marks I received two weeks before (a repeated CT test which ended up delaying my treatment by a whole week).  I was worried they'd pull the plug and delay my treatment yet again.  I thanked them for their perseverance.

There are many possible side effects with radiation and many with chemo.

One of the big ones is a result of having both chemo and radiation occur at the same time.  It's diarrhea.  A lethal combination of it.  I worry about that one.  Sounds like it'll land me in the hospital if it hits hard.  Yay!

Right now, the treatment has me very tired and queasy.  I haven't thrown up yet but my stomach is often unsettled and I'm sleeping all the time.  If I'm awake, I'm groggy.  I'm at the hospital daily and I asked both the chemo and radiation people about this fatigue and they each blamed the opposite--chemo said it was the radiation and radiation said it was the chemo.  It's probably both.