First Chemo

Treatment I - 5/21/02

The first dose of chemotherapy was not as bad as I had built it up to be.  I had visions of writhing in the chair like Linda Blair, head spinning around and all.  I checked into the outpatient center, and they ushered me up to the 'chemo bullpen' (for want of a better term).  There were ten or twelve chairs arranged around the perimeter of the room, and patients would come and go to get their fix.  I sat and waited for what seemed an eternity while they waited on my orders from the doctor and mixed up my drugs.  A happy nurse came over and told me I shouldn't leave the house without wearing a mask for the next six months, and that I should avoid crowded areas like 'Wal-Mart and Church.'

A lot of people have been asking me about what specifically happens during the chemo.  The kind I am doing is named ABVD, each letter stands for a drug in the cocktail.  They are all administered in turn, beginning with the Adriamycin in a LARGE syringe.  The nurse started an IV, and after giving me some steroids and anti-nausea medicine via the drip, slowly (over the course of about 10 or 15 minutes) injected the (bright red) Adriamyacin into me, pausing periodically to pull some blood back into the syringe to make sure she was still in the vein.  Apparently the drugs will cause a lot of problems if they get directly into the tissue.  Very comforting.

The next step was the Velban.  That was also administered via a push through a big syringe.  The other two (Bleomycin and DTIC) were boring in comparison, simply added to my IV line, and drip drip drip.  The whole process took about five hours, probably two and a half of which was actually getting shot up, the rest of it was sitting around waiting.

The after effects of chemotherapy have been quite interesting to say the least.  Aside from the two+ days of feeling run-down and a little queasy, I have returned to normal with a few exceptions as follows:

• One day of chronic hiccups
• Two or three days with constant 'pins and needles' feeling in my mouth (like when your foot begins to wake up)
• A large knot of muscle in my upper back, near my left shoulder blade