Sunday, October 21, 2012

Chemo #2, cocktail #3, day #2

I was having a hard time titling this post. I have had chemo for breast cancer. Then I had 1 round of chemo the day after I found out I had a sarcoma. A few weeks later, i had 4 chemo infusions in a row of a harsher formula. Then, another few weeks later, I had the same formula, but just one infusion and was equally sick.

Now, it has been a few more weeks, and it is a new chemo cocktail. I am less sick on these drugs. I think I wouldn't mind that I was so sick on the previous mix, if the cancer hadn't grown. I mean, what was the point of all that nausea and vomiting if it was not actually part of something moving me toward wellness? As I write, I realize that eliminating what doesn't work might help the doctors find out what does work.

Yesterday, my parents and Ken all agreed that I seemed to be feeling better than usual the day after chemo. Well, today, I am not feeling swell. My belly is a little flip-floppy and I am tired, but somehow unable to sleep deeply enough.

My nurse shut off the constant stream of morphine into my system. She started me on morphine tablets instead, to prepare me for going home. I can still press the morphine button and get a few milligrams, but it doesn't help the burning pain behind my knee or in my foot. I suspect that that pain relates to nerve stuff, which responds best to nervy drugs.

Yesterday, I opened many get well cards and gifts. Thank you all so, so much. It means so much to me. It sometimes takes me a while to send out a thank you card, but, honestly it takes me a while to do pretty much anything these days.

The doctor just came in and suggested that I get discharged Tuesday or Wednesday, to have enough time to switch from injecting morphine to controlling pain by pills alone. The treatment team is calculating how often I press the button and determining how many pills that equals.



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