Well aren’t I the big boy, this one is going to be easy, started counting those chickens I did. Any ways first things first, this round of therapy irinotecan is the active component and one bag of this provides the whole 3 week dose in one go. This means two weeks of medicating and one week of rest. Side effects started out nice and mild and things were progressing just fine. However some problems began to creep in around the edges. There are two major side effects with Irinotecan – one is stomach cramps, those are not a lot of fun. The other being diarrhoea – also not fun.
The cramps mostly passed after 4-5 days and became part of the background discomfort. It took some time for the diarrhea to show up but some other issues showed up first. Similar to many of my previous issues I’ve had before, this next phase began with extreme fatigue and gut pain. I was getting ready to go to an appointment when it became apparent that things were WAY too hard to do. I was out of breath, out of energy, and just wanted to lie down.
Tara called the oncology nurse to see if we should be concerned given these were uncomfortably similar symptoms to the heart attack. She felt that since I didn’t have a fever that this was normal chemo reaction and that I should rest, and anyway my homecare nurse Jennifer was on her way for physical tests. There is one little thing that continuously surprises me through this whole thing. It’s the little synchronicities of timing – the heart attack only after we were already in the hospital. And the presentation of my fever only when the home care nurse was here taking my vitals which got me to the hospital.
If it had waited another half hour I probably would have been left at home thinking all I needed was rest. It evolved into a trip to the hospital in an ambulance and here I sit. It turns out that Chemo can be really hard on the immune system and at the moment I don’t have one (immune system that is). My white blood cell count is very low. This means that fighting off any bugs is very difficult. So I have checked into ward 47 and the next few days will be antibiotics, monitoring my blood for signs of a return of my bug fighting abilities, and rest.
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ReplyDeleteA note from Tara:
ReplyDeleteSo it has been another exciting week on our journey with cancer. Sometimes this feels like we’re walking a well established trail and other times it feels like a wild water rapid ride (No I’m not talking about the diarrhea Curt) I understand that what Curt is going through right now is a common side effect of the chemo and it was important that we got to the hospital when we did as with white blood cell levels like he had a fever is an emergency and getting him here before he caught a serious bug is really important.
We are all beginning to get used to things being chaotic. It's impossible to stay in the heightened state of "emergency" for too long before you need a nap so we are doing our best at trying to find the balance between big excitment/big emotion and rest/healthy eating/taking care of the care giver etc. All I can say is that its a work in progress! Thanks for reading everyone!