The Chemo Work Day

Carly
Mar 31, 2016
4 min read

Tuesday was a long day, Travis and I headed to the clinic in the morning. We left the house shortly before 9am, to arrive at the clinic at 9:15am. Travis had blood drawn first because they need to make sure that his system is capable of handling chemo. Travis does not like blood, so when they drew blood from his port and he caught a glimpse of it he got incredibly light headed and lost all of the color in his face. He ended up having to put his head back and his feet up to get some blood back to his head.

After Travis had his blood drawn we had to wait a little while before he was called in for his appointment with the doctor. Before heading in to meet with the doctor they weighed Travis and he is now down to 202 lbs. The last time he was at the doctor he weighed 218 lbs, so he is still losing weight (since the beginning of January it's a total of 60 lbs). His doctor came in to talk to us about how things are going. He talked to Travis and got a sense of how things were going from him and his resounding response was that "things are working"! Travis is doing much better and hopefully on the road to life being more "normal" for him. The doctor also briefly talked about mental health and how cancer not only effects the body but also the mind!

After meeting with the doctor Travis was scheduled to have him Chemo. The first time he had chemo two weeks ago we were at the clinic for about 3 hours. This time they had a different regiment of medicines to administer so it took much longer...to be exact 5 1/2 hours. It was a very long day, Travis held up ok for the most part. He tends to get a little antsy and irritated if there are a lot of people around him talking and distracting him. At the clinic where they administer the chemo there are four bays and four chairs at each bay, so usually there are people around. After a little while, he settled in, read some magazines and did a word search which helped keep his mind off of what was going on.

Immediately after his chemo treatment Travis did have an extreme cold sensitivity. I had bought him some iced tea and a pecan bar to encourage him to eat during his treatment (he tends not to eat when he is at the clinic). When we got ready to leave he picked up the cup of iced tea and a couple of seconds later he handed it to me saying that he couldn't hold it, it was too cold!

When they told us about the cold sensitivity side effect I didn't think it would be a big deal. However, it makes things difficult when it comes to Travis staying hydrated. Like most people, we keep our drinks and beverages in the fridge, which obviously makes them cold. When things are cold not only does Travis not want to hold them, when he drinks them they taste horrible. So we need to take drinks out of the fridge and let them get to room temperature before he drinks them. I'm very happy that we are almost to spring because if it was winter it would make things much more difficult!

Besides the cold sensitivity the only other major side effect of the chemo has been fatigue. The doctors and nurses say this is one of the side effects that they just have not been able to remedy. Travis takes steroids as pre meds before his chemo and then the three days after chemo he takes steroids at home to help keep his strength up. He told me the day after chemo that shaving and walking around the house made him exhausted, like his body was just not cooperating.

Travis is not a big fan of his pump (there is a picture below of what it looks like), but he is slowly getting used to it. The other day when we got home from the clinic we put his pump in the small bag that they gave us and he was carrying it around on his shoulder. He said to me "I don't know how you carry a purse around all of the time!". I laughed at this comment and my response was "I usually don't carry my purse around the house Travis!". He nodded in agreement with me and continued to tell me that it was annoying to have to carry it around. I told him that he was really lucky to have the pump that he has because it is small and compact and doesn't have a battery. We also talked about how he only has to wear it for 46 hours and he can come home, he doesn't have to be in the hospital for three days getting chemo. The next day he was complaining again about the "contraption" but then he came around and said, as long as it's going to make me feel better I can deal with it!