Stunned and surprised

I started having some new chemo side effects in the last few days. Plus, the cold from last week has been lingering. I emailed my health care provider yesterday and told her/him about the side effect symptoms, which included a rash on the backs of my hands and forearms, toenails and fingernails painful to the touch, and lower back pain spasms. I suspected the back pain was a result of all the coughing I've been doing.

She/he told me to give a urine sample this morning before getting chemo, to make sure the back pain wasn't an infection, and confirmed I didn't need to do a blood draw, since the leeches were applied last week.

So, this morning I gathered up my crocheting, audio book, and stuff for errands after treatment and headed up to Capitol Hill. I went to the lab, and the lab tech said my orders were for a urine sample and blood draw. Not having the energy to argue, I complied with both. Blood was taken and I was sent off to a restroom with a baggie, two vials, a sanitary wipe and a small paper cup.

I am always intrigued by the directions to pee in the paper cup, after swabbing down my groinicological area with the sanitary wipe. At the risk of TMI, urinating without pubic hair has been a unique challenge. It never crossed my mind that pubic hair actually provides a route for urine to follow, once it leaves my bladder and urethra. If you think about it, when you wash your hair and let the water run over your hair, the water follows the flow of the hair. It's the same with pubic hair.

And my experience has been that without pubic hair, urinating is sort of a pee-free-for-all. It's not very orderly.

So you can imagine the challenge I faced this morning when told to pee into the cup. Once I was done, I felt compelled to deface the instructions posted on the wall that provided directions on how to urinate into the cup. If the directions had been accurate, they would have directed me to pee all over the cup, including inside, and all over my hand, and hope I got enough in the cup to fill the two vials.

Being 51 years old, I cannot imagine that this kind of ordeal will get easier or tidier as I age.

I made my way to the Infusion Center, checked in, and was told what room I was going to receive my weekly poison in. On the way to the room, I stopped by the nurses' station to tell the charge nurse about the new side effects. She said the rash and nail sensitivity were both a side effect of Taxol, and they'd let my Oncologist know before giving me chemo.

So I made my way to my sunny room.

My nurse came in and took my blood pressure and temperature. She looked at my back to make sure the pain I was experiencing there wasn't the rash spreading. She looked at my hands and my arms, and I told her about the pain I felt when my fingernails or toenails were touched. She told me that my Oncologist may choose to give me a different chemo with milder side effects and that if they continued with the Taxol, the side effects would get worse.

I asked her why they didn't just use the alternative chemo from the beginning, and she said that it's not as effective at killing cancer as the Taxol.

So I sat on the bed and began to crochet. After a while, my nurse said she'd talked to my Oncologist and he wanted to see me before writing orders for the chemo. 

Being a worry wart, I worried that he would hold off on today's treatment and thus drag out the chemo treatment for a few weeks.

About an hour later he showed up, took a look at the rash and at my fingernails, and surprised the hell out of me by telling me I could stop the Taxol.

He said I'd had eight treatments, and there was no clinical proof that 12 treatments (the amount I was supposed to receive) was any more effective than eight.

That was it. He shook my hand, told me I'd start radiation therapy within four weeks, and would see him again before then.

As he left the room, I remembered my much-despised chest port and asked him if I could have it removed. He said he's write the orders and it would be done in the surgeon's office, not in surgery itself.

I was stunned and not at all prepared for his pronouncement about stopping the chemo. It had not crossed my mind that this was an option. I thought I was going to have to hunker down and put up with the side effects.

I started to follow my Oncologist to ask him another question when I ran into my nurse. She asked what he had said and when I told her, she looked as surprised as I felt. There wasn't anything for me to do except leave; there was no reason to hang around. With a few words spoken by my Oncologist, I was done with the Infusion Center. It was like magic, though not very enchanting.

I said goodbye to the nursing staff, thanked them for all their care, and left.

I had texted my husband throughout this. He was as surprised as I.

I headed out to finish my errands and go home.

Now that I've been home a few hours, it still doesn't seem real. I want to be excited and celebrate, but I don't have the energy. I tried working in the yard, but wasn't able to do much without needing to rest and catch my breath. I'd like to jump up and down, but I remain subdued by the chemo.