First Day of Treatment

Okay, so here it is at the end of the day and I can happily say I survived the first treatment of chemotherapy. My appointment was at 10:00am, giving me plenty of time to sleep in, have breakfast, relax, and pack water, snacks, reading material, and electronics to keep my son and I occupied over the next 4.5 hours. You would have thought I was packing for a road trip! I was so happy to have my son with me this first treatment. His support helped me get through the first day jitters. Our day was almost uneventful.

See how great I look?

The IV was put in near my wrist and was comfortable after the nurse positioned it within a couple of tries. The delivery of drugs went as follows: first was a saline solution, then came the premeds to handle the nausea, next was the Taxotere, followed by the Cytoxan, then more saline at the end. The scary time for a first treatment is during the Taxotere infusion. There can be some serious allergic reactions to watch out for, but lucky me, I didn't feel a thing. And no side effects, like nausea, either. During the lengthy infusion I was entertained by another very friendly and talkative patient that happened to have been a past employee with my current place of employment. We had lots to talk about, which left me no time to read my books or magazines, play with electronics, or visit with my son. I had definitely over-packed. Talking with others really helped the time pass by fast. Of course my son may say different. He kept himself busy with his books and occasional conversations I could squeeze in with him between my new friend's dialogs.


So you might think this was one boring day, but no! I had to get things going a bit, or my son was going to die from boredom. So there I am reaching down with my IV'd arm into my bag to get something when I felt some serious pain around the needle. I must have done something to move it wrong. It was hurting bad so I looked up and called for a nurse. "NURSE, NURSE, something is wrong. I'm hurting over here!" As they rushed over, I glanced back down at my wrist and saw it was ballooning up around the needle. The needle had slid out of the vein and the solution was dripping into surrounding tissue. A nurse was at my side turning off the IV and removing the needle lickety-split. She repositioned the needle further up into the crook of my arm and started up the IV once again. Thankfully, the transfusion completed without any more problems. The swelling at the original site was remedied by use of a heating pad. By the time I was going home, there was no swelling left to be seen. It was a bit scary since I didn't know what was happening at first, but the nurses have seen this happen before and knew what to do, responding immediately. We have a great team working with us at this oncology center. They are very caring and have wealths of information to share with us about how to handle all of the possible side effects that we may experience.


I continue to be nausea-free. I snacked and drank loads of water during the treatment, had dinner afterwards and continue to drink lots of water into the evening. I even got out to the mall and finished my Christmas shopping this evening. I pray the rest of the next 12 weeks of treatment is as gentle as today. Time will tell.