Guess who's getting more steroids? ME.
Rewind to earlier this week. Day from hell Tuesday, they punched a hole in the back of my left hand to do some bloodwork while we were waiting to get the clog in my port completely clear. Tuesday night the back of my left hand was a little itchy. I didn't think anything about it. It had been abused, and I'd been out in the sun quite a bit over the weekend and am super sensitive to it right now. I'm really careful about sunscreen but when you have to wash your hands a million times a day it's easy to slip.
Wednesday night my right hand was a little itchy too. Didn't think anything about it. I burned the back of my hand maybe a week ago in a minor falafel incident (pulling the pan out of the oven), so of course, it's blistering and healing up (sooo much more slowly than I am used to) and a little itchy.
Thursday night the soles of my feet started itching. Friday morning my ankles and shins were itching. Last night at dinner I had one of those oh-shit moments - what if this is the beginning of peripheral neuropathy? Totally normal symptom of taxol, and it's why I've been taking the glutamine supplenents. So after dinner I got online and scared myself stupid, and around 10pm called the cancer center at Stanford for advice (after also scratching my left foot bloody). The doc talked me down about the neuropathy (still could be, but it's rare to present as itching in chemo patients, but I'm also on a trial drug that could trigger it too), told me to take a bunch of benedryl, go to my closest ER if my breathing got weird in any way, and call her around 10 pm tonight if it hadn't gotten better. I took 3 benedryl and 1 mg of ativan and went to bed. Never really got to sleep. Around 2, the itching was worse, I took a fourth benedryl and another ativan.
At 4:30 I still hadn't slept for more than 20 minutes at a stretch, the itching was worse and I took a 3rd ativan and two more bendryl and decided I was being a moron and called her back. She asked about my breathing, and confirmed several times that my lungs were OK, and told me to get my ass in the car and drive to the stanford ER. So I woke Bob up and we drove down there. Only takes 47 minutes at 5am on a Saturday.
So we got there, were the only people in triage and went straight in to see a nurse. They tried to access my port to draw some bloodwork and of course, it's partially blocked again. They did get some blood after I did a few contortions, but it took five minutes to fill the first of several vials, so they clipped it off and went into my arm. Yay. They came back and gave me 3 prednisone pills (60mg, total, I think, I was waaaay out of at that point) and just let me sleep in a quiet room with Bob to see if they would help. I'd say they knocked the itching down by about 90%. It's never gone entirely away.
Got a script for a weeks worth of prednisone, orders that I get both benedryl and decadron again in my pre-meds before infusion from now on, and a heavier duty antihistime (hydroxyzine HCL). Came home, took more ativan, slept until about 3pm. So here we are. Prednisone is keeping me up. I'm waiting for the antihistamine and ativan to knock me back out. Everything still itches but not as much as it was a 4:30 this morning, and I'll need to go in two hours early for my bloodwork on Tuesday so we have enough time for the altaplase to really do its thing.
And of course, I've just arranged my life to have what I've been calling "coma Wednesdays" but now I'm back on the steroids and will be crashing Thursdays and Fridays, so a lot of my work stuff is totally borked again, even though I'll be awake enough to do most of it. Just not on the days I thought. Yay. Knowing that this is the "easy" part is screwing with my head a little bit too. At least a the moment I've got so many benzos in my system that I pretty much DNGAF anymore. At least for tonight.
Tomorrow, another big whammy of prednisone and I'm hosting book club. What could possibly go wrong? :)
Rewind to earlier this week. Day from hell Tuesday, they punched a hole in the back of my left hand to do some bloodwork while we were waiting to get the clog in my port completely clear. Tuesday night the back of my left hand was a little itchy. I didn't think anything about it. It had been abused, and I'd been out in the sun quite a bit over the weekend and am super sensitive to it right now. I'm really careful about sunscreen but when you have to wash your hands a million times a day it's easy to slip.
Wednesday night my right hand was a little itchy too. Didn't think anything about it. I burned the back of my hand maybe a week ago in a minor falafel incident (pulling the pan out of the oven), so of course, it's blistering and healing up (sooo much more slowly than I am used to) and a little itchy.
Thursday night the soles of my feet started itching. Friday morning my ankles and shins were itching. Last night at dinner I had one of those oh-shit moments - what if this is the beginning of peripheral neuropathy? Totally normal symptom of taxol, and it's why I've been taking the glutamine supplenents. So after dinner I got online and scared myself stupid, and around 10pm called the cancer center at Stanford for advice (after also scratching my left foot bloody). The doc talked me down about the neuropathy (still could be, but it's rare to present as itching in chemo patients, but I'm also on a trial drug that could trigger it too), told me to take a bunch of benedryl, go to my closest ER if my breathing got weird in any way, and call her around 10 pm tonight if it hadn't gotten better. I took 3 benedryl and 1 mg of ativan and went to bed. Never really got to sleep. Around 2, the itching was worse, I took a fourth benedryl and another ativan.
At 4:30 I still hadn't slept for more than 20 minutes at a stretch, the itching was worse and I took a 3rd ativan and two more bendryl and decided I was being a moron and called her back. She asked about my breathing, and confirmed several times that my lungs were OK, and told me to get my ass in the car and drive to the stanford ER. So I woke Bob up and we drove down there. Only takes 47 minutes at 5am on a Saturday.
So we got there, were the only people in triage and went straight in to see a nurse. They tried to access my port to draw some bloodwork and of course, it's partially blocked again. They did get some blood after I did a few contortions, but it took five minutes to fill the first of several vials, so they clipped it off and went into my arm. Yay. They came back and gave me 3 prednisone pills (60mg, total, I think, I was waaaay out of at that point) and just let me sleep in a quiet room with Bob to see if they would help. I'd say they knocked the itching down by about 90%. It's never gone entirely away.
Got a script for a weeks worth of prednisone, orders that I get both benedryl and decadron again in my pre-meds before infusion from now on, and a heavier duty antihistime (hydroxyzine HCL). Came home, took more ativan, slept until about 3pm. So here we are. Prednisone is keeping me up. I'm waiting for the antihistamine and ativan to knock me back out. Everything still itches but not as much as it was a 4:30 this morning, and I'll need to go in two hours early for my bloodwork on Tuesday so we have enough time for the altaplase to really do its thing.
And of course, I've just arranged my life to have what I've been calling "coma Wednesdays" but now I'm back on the steroids and will be crashing Thursdays and Fridays, so a lot of my work stuff is totally borked again, even though I'll be awake enough to do most of it. Just not on the days I thought. Yay. Knowing that this is the "easy" part is screwing with my head a little bit too. At least a the moment I've got so many benzos in my system that I pretty much DNGAF anymore. At least for tonight.
Tomorrow, another big whammy of prednisone and I'm hosting book club. What could possibly go wrong? :)
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