Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush

It's like that, only with less dancing.

Round two of chemo.

No hair loss yet. Not that you can tell.

Second time around this particular berry bush. This is 2 out of 12; keep that in mind. It's a total marathon. And each time, you have new side effects that you can almost guarantee you're going to run into. "What fresh hell is this?" to misquote Dorothy Parker. Look, if her biography can do it, so can I. So, each new venture brings new experiences. From what I'm told, they're cumulative, so... I got that going for me.

There's very little that Bill Murray can't make better.

One thing that is great is that I can learn from what happened last time. The first go-round, my mouth was one of the levels of hell--the burning one. So, to counter that, I ate more ice. Pretty much all the way through my entire treatment. Then I went to a movie and got an Icee. Then I went home and ate popsicles. You get the idea. Counter the fires of hell with the coldness of that other level Dante talked about.

So... cold...

And it worked! My mouth still hurt, but so much less.

The other thing I did was make sure I took pain medication right when the pain started up on that day. What?? Pain medication for pain? Brilliant! See? I was expecting you this time, you monster!

Such a great show, until Netflix got a hold of it.

So, when we went to go see our movie afterward, this time I was far more comfy. Also, I had two orders of pretzels with nacho cheese. I can't explain it. The mouth wants what it wants. Also, sweet things don't always taste sweet. Did I mention that chemo makes everything taste different? Well, it does.

Oh, one thing I should mention, as it comes up later. When I went in, they found that my white-blood cell count was down to 2.1. A normal healthy person's usually sits between 5-10. They want a chemo patient to be above 3. So I was low. They almost decided not to do the treatment. But I got the green light to go ahead, but they warned me not to be around sick people and to sanitize everything in sight. Ugh. I hate hand sanitizer.

Onward. Just like last time, the next day I felt pretty good for most of the day. Got a little sketchy toward the end, but overall pretty decent. And then I started the decent into madness. Literally. but we'll talk about that in another blog post.

Just so we're clear.

Like last time, I got more and more tired as the week went along. Like last time, I hurt more and more as the week went along. Unlike last time, I ended up in the emergency room.

Back up. Lemme 'splain.

Pretty accurate, TBH.

In talking to my oncologist, he let me know that fevers were something we wanted to watch out for. So I did, mostly. I started feeling feverish the Thursday after my treatment on the previous Friday (so 6 days out). The temperature I was to watch out for was 101 degrees F. (A bit higher than 38 C). I hit 101.4, so I called, like a dutiful little cancer patient.

It was after hours, so the service contacted the on-call oncologist (not my doctor) and he unsurprisingly said, "Go to the ER." So I went. This was the day before my birthday.

I get to the ER, and I tell them I'm a cancer patient who's on chemo. They said, "Ah!" and hustled me back to triage. To be fair, there were no gunshot wound patients or anyone bleeding out, so it's not like I was cutting in line or anything.

Still feverish. Not as bad. They take my vitals, and I tell them I've got a port. This is great! I'm a needle-phobe, so this time, instead of them rooting around to find a vein, all they have to do is access my port, right?

Wrong.

Yeah, yeah, you don't want to see it. But I had to do it, so... suck it.

Apparently, they need two samples from different parts of my body. So they're gonna access my port (let me be clear, I don't like that either, but at least we'd been able to put numbing cream on it), and they're going to stick me.

Nurse comes in, super friendly, looks for a vein. "Oh, here's a good one." Proceeds to blow the vein. So, now I've got a nice bruise that runs up my arm--it's super pretty now, all purples and yellows. At this point, my phobia is in full swing, but she does manage to get the IV into my other arm. Yay!

They take my blood. Did I mention I can feel fluid entering and exiting my port? Pressure that changes depending on which direction things are going? So, that's super freaky.

Then we sit. I'm pretty sure I'm there at least for the night, and my wife is sitting by my side, holding my hand and being all-around incredible. Seriously, y'all. She's AMAZING. She's also a nurse, so she lets me know when the other medical people are covering their butts.

We're there until almost midnight. Then the doctor comes in. He's super kind, listens, answers questions. And this is in the ER. That doesn't happen too often.

I get a clean bill. Nothing came back. The big concern was that I had caught an infection, especially with my white blood cell count being as low as it had been. Nothing came back, so they could release me.

He explains to me that around 5-7 days out from a chemo treatment is when the medicine is attacking the immune system the most. And that's where we were.

I also get this news. My white blood cell count is now up to 4.3. Now up in the range they expect for a chemo patient!

Hot damn!

I got to go home for my birthday.

All was well with the world. You know. For the most part.

---------------------------------
Stay with us for our next installment, where we'll discuss birthday sorbet and other delectable concoctions.

Next post.