Well, the problem with being Stage 3 was that the only choice I had was to start with Chemo. I’ll admit, I kept all my documentation from it, including the medicine consult that listed the meds, and what the side effects would be, but I am also too lazy to go pull them out to go over them in detail. I was typically getting two medicines at a time. At the Helen Graham, I received my chemo infusions at Medical Oncology Hematology Consultants, and my awesome oncologist is Amy McGhee-Jez. That first consult was good, she was thorough and explained a lot to me. My sister-in-law’s sister went with me for this appointment, and she asked the questions I didn’t know to ask. Dr. McGhee specifically said, “we have to be aggressive here, we want to kill as much cancer as possible before you go into surgery.” Which means she wanted me to start immediately.
I had a problem was, she wanted me to start chemo as soon as possible. I wasn’t opposed to starting ASAP, as long as I got to do what I wanted. My sister-in-law had planned a surprise birthday trip for my brother in Antigua and Barbuda, I had booked this trip a good nine months previous, and I most definitely did not want to miss it. I initially said, “can I do my first chemo right before I leave.” Initially, Dr. McGhee was pensive. I then asked, “ok, what if we wait until I come back?” Which was about three weeks out from this consult. More pensiveness, but she agreed, as long as I promised to start Monday I returned. I was like “absolutely.” But L said, “um, Doc? How comfortable are you with that plan?” Dr. McGhee looked me dead in the eyes and said “I’m not.” L followed up with, what are you comfortable with.” Dr. McGhee thought for a moment and said that because I was young (just 48 at the time), that I would not feel anything the first chemo session. I’d likely be able to go and enjoy myself and not feel a thing. The worst she anticipated was fatigue. She said she was ok with me going if dI promised that not only did I have the treatment the day before I left, but that I was in on Monday (we left on Tuesday and I came home on Sunday), for my next treatment. That was a no brainer for me, “Deal.”
With the regimen I was about to embark on, Dr. McGhee also wanted me to wait until after I returned from my trip. She didn’t anticipate any issues with the implant installation, but she also didn’t want to run the risk of me getting an infection while out of the country. The thing with chemo is that is very harsh on the veins. The port is basically a device that is implanted with the capacity to deliver the meds in major arteries vs trying to complete IVs via your arm, hand, etc. The port allowed for drawing of blood and the IV meds to be administered. Mine was inserted on the right-side chest wall, just below my clavicle/collar bone. There was a wire inserted just at the jugular vein (you can see a very small scar from that incision), and I have a scar where the Port was inserted. It was uncomfortable, or just an odd sensation when it was installed. I guess it itched quit a bit and I felt myself rubbing the spot where the port was often. However, I am very grateful for the port. I was able to get blood drawn from that, so no one fighting my veins to take blood each time, etc.
So the infusion room had rows of reclining chairs. Our room is divided into three sections, numbered one through three. When the coordinator would come into the lobby, they would call your name and tell you which section to sit in. My favorite seats were by the window which had a nice view of the pond below. They had a fridge for us to keep things in or for us to grab a water or juice if we needed. A water machine, and a Keurig so that we could make coffee or hot chocolate if we so pleased. A couple of bathrooms for our convenience, etc. Each section was manned by a couple of nurses. One nurse was usually responsible for administering your meds, while the other would validate the meds you were receiving (more on that in a few). Additionally, they had heated throws for us and pillows to get comfy because well, you could be there for a little as half an hour to several hours.
My first chemo was fairly uneventful. My favorite nurse was Jeff. He is a sweet guy, but super serious and I appreciated that. He tapped the vein in my arm easy peezy and made the whole experience reasonably uneventful. So I received a pretreatment cocktail which included Benadryl to combat an allergic reaction to the meds, an anti-inflammatory and a third thing that I can’t recall at the moment. I’m sure I’ll be reminded when I start my next chemo sessions. You wait for half an hour for those to kick in and then the main event begins. Once that began, I was usually in the chair for about four hours. After your medicines were administered, you still had to wait for approximately 30 minutes after they concluded to ensure you didn’t react negatively.
My first series of meds was a weekly dose from the third week of July 2023 to October 2023 (roughly twelve weeks) of the first meds. The caveat here is, before you get your chemo, you have to have blood work drawn to ensure that your blood levels were conducive to allow you to have your chemo. If a number was too far out of whack, you were not having chemo. This happened to me once during my chemos. I was bummed because I was on a timetable and I’m regimented in a way, that just kept me from being done with chemo and onward to surgery. After the weekly meds ran it’s course, I then had the “red death” med. It was red, which caused my urine to turn red as well. That one was every three weeks. I finished all chemo a couple of weeks before Christmas.
So during that whole experience, I worked. Sitting in that room and dwelling on what was happening wasn’t a thing I wanted to do. I worked on reports, I made and received phone calls, and kept my day-to-day normal. I didn’t tell my subordinates and many of my colleagues for a very long time. They didn’t know unless I told them directly. The nurses would just shake their heads and say, “always working, huh?” I think I took maybe one infusion session to just let the Benedryl take over and sleep. I do recall an instance where I was working and I took out my earbuds for a moment. I couldn’t help but laugh because every other person receiving their infusion was completely knocked out and it was a sea of snoring. Very loud snoring.
Chemo became a routine for me, another session to mark off the list. However, by three weeks into my chemo, I noticed that three days after chemo was administered, I’d feel a serious “burn” or more to the point, pain. Initially, I was thinking if that was the only side effect, fine so be it. However, I also noticed when I did my self-exams the area felt less “hard”, like it was shrinking. Of course, I told Dr. McGhee about this and she clearly thought I was insane. Yet, when week five hit and she did her exam, her brow furrowed and she looked at me and said, “you are right, it is getting smaller.” She had me describe what I felt and confirmed I was one of those people who could feel the meds actually “attacking” the cancer cells. That was neat yet disconcerting as well. This was great news.
Now I must admit, my chemo experience was different from many folks. I can say in all the sessions I had, I only had one session, after the transition to the second set of meds, where I felt physically ill. Fatigue was a thing for me, I was tired most of the time, but sleep was also elusive. Sleep was elusive because chemo was burning me up from the inside out. Night sweats and not getting comfortable enough to sleep through the night was common for me. I had nausea happen once in all the sessions I had, so I was thankful for that. Granted I did look like a Chow Chow. I had purple spots on my tongue and my sense of taste was completely off. At one point, anything with tomato tasted like cinnamon to me. I am a huge fan of pasta, and tomatoes in general, that nipped that in the bud for about four months.
Hair… well I think I got to September or October before I felt like my hair was thinning and asked K, my sister-in-law to shave it off. The funny thing was, I asked “so what does it look like back there?” K said, “Cute, you have a nice shaped head.” Honestly it was funny, I always liked having longer hair, usually just past shoulder length and everyone liked me bald. Bald helped because it cooled me down faster. The downside of the hair loss was eyebrows and eyelashes were also nonexistent. On the upside, I rarely had to shave my legs before that, but I basically went almost a year without having to shave which made me happy.
Dr. McGhee offered me a med that shut down my ovaries. I still hadn’t had children and I yeah, I know I’m older, but I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to attempt to have a child if I wanted. So I jumped at the chance for the meds. The other upside of this was, for someone who had horrible periods due to fibroids, I didn’t have a period from August 2023 to January 2026. I’ll admit, my feelings were hurt when the hot pink fury reared its ugly head again. I was happy not to run to the bathroom every half an hour or have cramps. An unexpected perk for sure.
I had two mishaps the entire time of my chemo journey. My second session had a nurse, who looked as if she should have been very experienced, but was probably one of the least experienced in the unit. She had taken my blood once before the port was in and I wanted to punch her then. She’s a horrible stick. Then she started the IV for my chemo, she picked a vein in my hand and blew out the vein. Jeff noticed what was happening and came over to take over. He was pissed, he played it as cool as possible but in essence he asked her, “why would you use that one, it is way too small.” Needless to say, I quietly complained about her to the nurse for Dr. McGhee, I never had her on my case again. She wasn’t in the unit for too long.
Finally, something people should know, when the nurses validated your meds, the administrating nurse would call out the med, dosage and the length of time of the infusion and the other nurse would look at the computer and check it off. Well, this means that everyone hears what you are getting. I was curative. At one point in my treatment, one of my meds was in short supply. For me, this meant that I was supposed to receive a reduced dose so that more patients around the world could receive the med. If you were terminal, then you wouldn’t get the med at all. An older lady heard that I was receiving this med on shortage and she got excited, “oh you have it back in. Great.” I was mortified when I heard the nurse working with her say “she’s curative, she would get the med. You aren’t.” I couldn’t sink low enough in my chair.
Chemo is an effective poison. It worked wonders on me. We went from feeling the feeling of hardness throughout my breast to feeling nothing. The subsequent scans for surgery confirmed as much. So six weeks after my final chemo, I was ready for the next phase. Surgery was on the horizon and I was advocating or the most minimal surgery as possible. However, what I wanted wasn’t in the cards and we had to work toward what would happen next and that took more of an adjustment for me than having chemo.
Leave a Reply