Friday 5 March 2010

Chemo Cycle 1 complete WOO.

Yesterday (4th March) I went for my second treatment which would complete my first cycle of ABVD.

I don't know why but I had a feeling that this one wasn't going to go as well as the first treatment and sadly I was right.

All the nurses knew who I was before I even opened my mouth as they had seen me in the local newspaper!

I'd had the first treatment go through my left hand and my left arm had been achy and dead feeling for over a week after. I don't know why but I stupidly said to use my left arm again for this second treatment. Even the cannula going in hurt a lot more than usual. The first lot of drugs going through felt fine but as soon as the last one, the nasty one (Dacarbazine), went in after about 10minutes (bearing in mind this drug can take over an hour to drip through) the pain in my hand was so bad I was on the edge of tears. The nurses came over and turned the drip off while I sat holding back the tears. They gave me some paracetomol to take and then started the drip again after a short while. Straight away the pain was back and they had to turn the drip off and get the doctor.

The doctor mentioned having one of them picc(I think it was a picc??) lines put in which is a semi permenant tube inserted into my neck and chest. I nearly threw up on his face at the thought. I dont think I could face walking round with a tube hanging out of my neck or chest every day. The thought of it only being put in under sedation didnt help either. I told him I wasn't keen at all and so he said if I could manage with my arms then that was ok. Apparantly it's not often they put semi permenant lines in for this type of chemo anyway. He just said they could try as bigger vein further up my arm.

The nurse came over to put another cannula in my other arm. I thought she was going to put in near my elbow but she ended up putting into my hand. Great. Anyway, I managed to take all the drug through my right hand thank god. I think my veins in my left hand just hadnt had chance to recover from the first treatment but now that both hands have took drugs through on this treatment Im scared for next one as I don't know how Im going to cope with dacarbazine. Especially since now my left hand has a huge bruise already around where the cannula was and it was even painful just to type with that hand last night. It looks like it may have swollen a little too so I'm going to have to keep a very close eye on that.

All day after that I spent eating. I'm assuming that was down to the steroid injection I'd had before the chemo drugs. I wont even list what I had to eat or I'll be here all day haha.

But on a good note...I've only took 1 anti sickness tablet and that was before I went to bed last night and "just in case". It's 16.41 day 2 and I dont feel sick at all. I've probably just jinxed that though eh...

1 comment:

  1. Hi,
    I had a picc line put in but it didn't go into my neck, mine went into my arm. I had terrible trouble with the Dacarbazine as well which is why I opted for the line. I had no trouble after that and once I had got used to the line being in my arm I never knew it was there.... I hope the rest of the week goes well for you.
    Paula xx

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