Starting Chemo, November 2013 Group

yay for you Amazon

Hi all,

I started my first Chemo on Nov 28 so I guess that makes me part of the Nov group. I am on the FEC-D regime (Fec now D later) like some of the other Canadian ladies and have certainly found it interesting. The one thing that is a constant is nausea. Even with the full arsenault of anti nausea drugs I was not able to keep my stomach settled for the first two days and now still find solid food very difficult. The nurses in Oncology have been amazing and making sure I am hydrated with IV's and I am trying new meds (the non oral type) but if anyone has any ideas I'd be very interested.

With regards to Christmas this year - I will be very happy to see it come and go. It's hard to be cheery with your head in the toilet!

@jab everyone keeps telling me that if my anti-nausea meds don't work I should try marijuana for that. So far I haven't needed to consider it, but if it was a choice between that and barfing, you can probably guess which I'd choose. Hint: I *HATE* being nauseous.

More on my HGTV obsession: I'm watching one of those episodes where the young couple is looking for a house to buy, and they are just APPALLED by all the wild and crazy wallpaper choices in this house, and the weird colors, and the tile, and pretty much everything... and this occurred to me: Wouldn't it be AWFUL to be sitting around watching one of those episodes and realize that it was your own old house that was being shown and your own ...eclectic...design decisions that were being ridiculed? I gave myself the giggles thinking about it.

My temp is still hovering at a less-than-interesting 99.5, but my husband came home with a GRAND case of the sneezes and sniffles. Yikes.

I guess that depends on whether you live in a place where medical marijuana is legal or not. It's certainly not *here*, so if I have to go that route, I'll have to go to a more direct source, as it were.

BTW, does your doctor know you are puking blood?

Lisa137, my onc knows about the blood. I guess its not that uncommon. Anyway, nobody said this was going to be easy... Keep that husband at bay tonight, and watch that temp! Take good care.

JAB

jab - I go for acupuncture the day before my chemo. My acupuncturist picks points to control nausea & boost my immune system. Maybe it worked for me as I had only a bit of nausea & no vomiting. I also have a small pharmacy of anti-nausea meds. And I would not gp without either acupuncture or meds...so can't say which works for me, likely both. Just a thought to help you with your next dose??? I wish you all the best. Hope you are feeling better soon.

Oh...I also chewed on candied ginger & ginger snaps & drank ginger tea. Also suppose to help.

re: ginger snaps and ginger tea.... I got lucky in that my mom made a (quite gingery) pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving and sent the entire thing home with me. A slice of that with some cool whip was an INSTANT queasiness-killer. Kind of magical.

AUDRA67 - I don't know...I just do it. Got infusion Wednesday and going back to work tomorrow. I just hope I get a few "no-shows".

AMAZON- Welcome back!

Today was a good day! Got compliments on my hair (hehehe wig) I wasn't about to tell....

81degrees F in Texas today, JUST GORGEOUS!

Lssy2304 - my lashes are thinning, nothing noticeable with the eyebrows, but I am doing AC, one week out from my second treatment.

Sending prayers and minimal side effects to everyone getting their treatment this week!

Good luck today, Pat! The day my chemo was postponed my sister insisted I watch Orange is the New Black. Dark humor and I'm hooked and saving the rest for chemo days. Was thinking the same about Paulette.

Oh yes, Orange is the New Black! I watched it all when I was laid up with my original infection. Funny, dark and engrossing. I also like the analogy that we're spending time in prison for the duration, we've been sentenced to a particularly tough unit where they shave our heads, mark our bodies, insert under our skin "ports" that are clearly actually tracking devices. We receive physical and mental torture, and the only bright spot are the friendships we make with our fellow inmates.

My temp seems to be back to pretty much normal today, and my husband is less sniffly and sneezy, so that's good.

In the category of things I'd only say HERE or to my husband, even though I haven't been constipated at all through this first round of chemo, nevertheless, a little while ago I went to the bathroom and Pooped a Mighty Poop (was concerned for the welfare of my toilet,) immediately FELT my temperature drop to normal, so checked it and sure enough, it was a textbook 98.6. I went and asked my husband (who is working at home today) if I looked skinnier to him than I had 15 minutes earlier and he appraised me and agreed that yes, I did look somewhat skinnier.

I would feel a LOT better in the mornings if I would duct tape my mouth shut before I go to sleep, or something. I apparently cannot sleep with a closed mouth---especially if my partial dentures aren't actually in my mouth--so I'm waking up EVERY morning with an open mouth, dry sore tongue, and sore throat. The magic mouthwash and a bowl of oatmeal fixes all that right up, but damn I'm tired of waking up that way, especially since I'm sleeping SO GOOD when I get woken up by the painful tongue.

Pat, you've convinced me to check out Dexter. My challenge is always finding things that husband and I can watch TOGETHER, because we love watching stuff together but our tastes in what to watch are so radically different that it really IS a challenge. Right now though we ARE working our way through the entirety of Grey's Anatomy (funny that THAT show doesn't bother me, isn't it?) but when we are done with it---or if we lose interest in it along the way, we'll need some new stuff to watch.

Actually, I'm open to suggestions for other things we might both like, so I'll tell y'all that in the past, we were both addicted to CSI (the original version, with the original cast,) and were both VERY addicted to House. He's not much into sitcoms, but he did love Everybody Loves Raymond (although the REASON he loved the show is because the Raymond character is SO MUCH like himself.... so yes, basically I live with Raymond.) We also both like Deadliest Catch a lot---though it's started to wear thin over the past season or so, but that's pretty much the only reality show I like....well unless you count the HGTV stuff and Antiques Roadshow.

re: HGTV and the fact that my husband is at home today: He came in here a few minutes ago just as I was waking up from a nap, and said "Hey did you hear that one of your "fix 'em up" guys got killed in an accident?! I was *immediately* wide awake and the first words out of my mouth were "OMG It wasn't Jonathan was it?" as I reached wildly for my computer trackball so I could find out. And there, friends and neighbors, is the REAL reason for my HGTV addiction. Jonathan from Property Brothers. As it turns out, it was Bill Beckwith from Curb Appeal...and I feel a little like someone I know has passed away, but seriously, if it had been *Jonathan* I'd have been in deepest mourning for days, most likely. My husband was like "Which one is Jonathan," and I said "The good looking one," and husband says "But they're IDENTICAL TWINS," and I said "they aren't THAT identical...and Jonathan knows how to DO stuff....." My husband found this pretty amusing...I guess he's not threatened because he knows that that's part of why I married HIM: He knows how to DO STUFF, too.

Ditto on not being able to watch the pitiful animal commercials. I can't even listen to Sarah Mclachlan sing *happy* songs anymore (does she even HAVE any happy songs?) I'd save them ALL if I could, but we're up to our necks already with the two dogs and, presently, a YARD FULL of kittens that we have to figure out what to do with because a local stray decided to have kittens on our front porch right around the same day I was diagnosed with ILC. And we don't have a single animal that we acquired by deciding we wanted a new pet and going out and picking one out. They are ALL rescues to one degree or another. But I still wish I could save them ALL.

Has anyone else found that chemo slows down time? All my life it has seemed like time has been speeding up, but the week and a half since my first chemo seems like it's been MONTHS long. I'm actually kind of enjoying that effect!

My second AC will be on Monday. For those who've are ahead of me on the AC trail, what should I expect? Is the second round pretty much like the first? Worse? Much worse?

My scalp is starting to feel a little sore ...actually it's my hair that's sore...here and there. Is this just because I'm napping too much, or a sign that my hair is getting ready for its Great Exodus? I still haven't buzzed it, or gone shopping for hats/scarves; I guess I should get on the ball with that.

Anyone else get the hiccups REALLY EASILY? Anyone else HATE GETTING HICCUPS as much as I do? Argh!

I feel so *normal* today. I can even TYPE correctly for the most part! My husband asked me how to spell something a little while ago and I didn't have to hesitate to spell it correctly for him. I'm not an idiot today! Woohoo!

Hopefully that will stick until chemo day on Monday; my house could use some attention. Okay, a lot of attention.

I hope everyone has a GOOD day. Hugs to all.

Amazon- glad you are home!

Lisa, did AC#2 Monday of this week. They slowed down the cytoxin drip and the headache wasn't as bad tins week. They also thought the headache could have been from the zofran so my mo changed me to Ativan which seems to work better and helps me sleep. This round seems to be going better than last. I am only 2 days out though. We will see if I get fatigued later this week. My hair has started to come out in small clumps. I don't know how long it will take at this point for it to come out enough to get me to shave it.MO said he has seen it take as long as a month.

When I am not nauseus I switch from HGtV to the cooking channel. Since this ordeal began my husband has hooked me on two netflix series, the first is Weeds. The first few seasons were entertaining, but them they got ridiculous. My husband also likes Sons of Anarchy which I didn't think I would like because of the violence. But they really develop the characters and I am enjoying it.

Someone on another thread suggested an eyebrow kit from sephora. I ordered that in anticipation of losing my eyebrows.

Have a great week, ladies!

@Pat oh yeah meant to comment on what you said about drugs, too. You're right: at this point I have a "reserve supply" of both hydrocodone and percoset, neither of which I've used in weeks if not more than a month since I have no pain anymore, plus the ativan and klonipin.

I'm not too concerned about that aspect of it at this point though; I rarely touch the ativan, and I do believe that the klonipin is beneficial enough to me that it outweighs any risk of addiction. It's kind of been my miracle drug, and so far at least I don't seem to be building a tolerance to it or needing any additional, so I suspect it may be my companion for a while even after I'm done dealing with the most immediate fallout from the cancer diagnosis. Or then again, maybe not; I've skipped my second daily dose a few times recently just because I never felt the first dose "wear off," and therefore never needed the second one. My PCP said that might happen; that once I could put my anxiety aside and use my full capacities to learn to deal with cancer and the aftermath of that diagnosis, that I might find I needed the drug less. I think the key for me was that he put me on a low dose---just enough to keep me from being a complete wreck, but not enough so that I was artificially happy, if that makes sense. So it's not as if I "crash" when it wears off.

But yeah, I think that health care providers who deal with cancer patients are very much aware that keeping our mental and emotional states as "up" as possible goes a long way towards getting us through this very very difficult time, and that the benefits do outweigh the risks, in our cases. Since I started the klonipin, a little over a month ago, I guess, other than a few weepy moments here and there, I have not had a single episode of feeling hopeless or terrified or panicked, or any of the other awful things I was feeling before, and that's GOT to be helpful for dealing with chemo and healing, right?

And, what can a person do? I mean, I could skip that drug and be as depressed and anxious as I was before it was prescribed, and therefore utterly miserable through all this, or I can take the drug, and possibly have to deal with being weaned off it slowly later. Easy choice, for me, honestly. If..."alternative medicine" was legal here I might be quicker to go that route, but I'm not sure how well that would work for me , since back in my younger days I did some of that recreationaly, and it actually *caused* me to have anxiety. No clue if that would still be the case---may find out though if I get bad nausea problems as chemo moves along.... I have several sources queued up and ready to help me out if I need it,, though I won't get all the tasty edible choices you do, unfortunately.