Content Note - this is heavy on things going wrong with IVs/Needles. Proceed with caution (Mo!).
I guess I don't need to establish at this point that if something could possibly go wrong, and probably something that never occurred to me in a million years could happen, it will. Don't worry, I'm not down about this one, it just hurt like a bitch and I'm back on the opiate train, whole hog, for a day or two.
Thirst issues - I think I wrote about this? Some time during the AC chemo (Nov-Dec) I lost my thirst cues - I don't get thirsty anymore. I'm sure it's the primary reason I ended up back in the hospital with that kidney/bladder thing in January. If I pick up a glass and take a sip, and I am dehydrated, I will instinctively chug the whole thing, but "thirst" is no longer the reason I pick up the glass. I literally have to schedule it in my day or have it placed in front of me at a restaurant or need it for some other reason like taking pills. It's really weird.
I'm also a really hard stick for blood draws. I'm fat, my veins roll, blah blah. My bloodwork was scheduled for 11am yesterday and I've been working really hard on being super hydrated to make that, and the IV I'd need today for chemo easier. (My port/central line was on my sternum and was removed along with my mastectomy because we all thought I was done with chemo at that point.) I've got a lot of good motivation - remember that blood transfusion? They had to go into my wrist, they couldn't even find anything on the back of my hand. It throbbed the entire time the infusion was happening (four hours, five?).
So I've been setting timers and taking ten sips of water every 15 minutes while I sit at my computer. That plus my morning coffee and smoothie are worth 60-80 oz a day. Yesterday was a huge success. Easiest stick I've had for a while on a blood draw - she only had to try twice.
My bloodwork came back good - everything within normal limits now. I'm not anemic for the first time in six months.
So today I went in for my infusion. Ann (the nurse) apologized when I came in because she realized it would take longer than the 20 minutes she mentioned yesterday on the phone - typically carbo is given weekly with taxol - but I've already had taxol, so I get three times as much once every three weeks. So she revised that time up to an hour plus pre-meds, but that's still shorter than anything else I've done by a long shot.
She found a vein inside the crook of my right arm and set up the IV for the pre-meds (steroid, benedryl, zofran to prevent nausea). It hurt going in and when she started the drip it kept on hurting much like the transfusion in my wrist did. We went over it and she determined that the drips were going where they were supposed to and that living with that pain for another 90 minutes or so was preferable to trying again on a different spot (my choice and she didn't argue), and that if any did leak out of the vein the drugs I was getting today wouldn't damage the surrounding tissue.
So she came back 20 minutes later and switched the pre-meds out for the carbo which goes into a pump to push the injection harder. She set that up and walked away. I was sitting in the infusion chair (like a big recliner with side tables) with my jacket over me because it was freezing in there. I knew something was wrong about 30 seconds in, the pain was going up exponentially and my hand was throbbing too. I told Bob to go get her and when I pulled my jacket off I had a tennis ball quickly growing to a baseball on my right forearm. HOLY CRAP did that hurt. Stupid, stunned me didn't think to pinch the line to stop the input, it just kept getting bigger and hurting more. By the time Bob got her back in there (couldn't have been more than 90 seconds but it felt like forever) I was crying from the pain and my arm was just throbbing from wrist to elbow.
Short story - the pump plus the bad stick blew my vein out. Fortunately I didn't have any kind of reaction to the drug at all beyond the physical response of all that fluid leaking out in one spot. Another nurse came running and she brought me vicodin and an ice pack. I sat with that for half an hour, watching some of the swelling go down and waiting for the meds to kick in, and then we went looking for another spot. We did the rest of the infusion at one third the speed, straight into the back of my right hand. And we'll start there for the next three as well.
The good news is that so far I'm barely feeling anything else from the carbo. Maybe this thing is just a giant distraction. I feel a little off but other than running upstairs to pee every half hour I was fine to sit on the couch and watch good-to-moderately-trashy TV for a few hours tonight and ate a reasonable dinner. At the moment I'm on zofran (nausea), compazine (also nausea, I overlap the two for the first 48 hours), percocet, neurontin, and whatever's left of the steroid from the pre-meds. It's enough that while I feel pretty loopy and wouldn't dare drive a car right now, I'm not tired. My arm is still a bit swollen, but I think I'd probably have to point it out for someone to notice. It's still throbbing from my elbow into my hand though. And the anti-nausea meds, the pain meds, the daily iron supplement I have to take, and the carbo itself will all make me constipated. But that is a bridge to jump off another day.
While today has really sucked, it didn't trigger more depression for me. This is a one-off. I know what to do to prevent it next time, and I've got three weeks to get over this one. I'll be fine.
Added bonus, my incisions have healed enough in the underarm area that I wore deodorant for the first time since January 20 today. I am sure a lot more people than just me appreciate that.
I guess I don't need to establish at this point that if something could possibly go wrong, and probably something that never occurred to me in a million years could happen, it will. Don't worry, I'm not down about this one, it just hurt like a bitch and I'm back on the opiate train, whole hog, for a day or two.
Thirst issues - I think I wrote about this? Some time during the AC chemo (Nov-Dec) I lost my thirst cues - I don't get thirsty anymore. I'm sure it's the primary reason I ended up back in the hospital with that kidney/bladder thing in January. If I pick up a glass and take a sip, and I am dehydrated, I will instinctively chug the whole thing, but "thirst" is no longer the reason I pick up the glass. I literally have to schedule it in my day or have it placed in front of me at a restaurant or need it for some other reason like taking pills. It's really weird.
I'm also a really hard stick for blood draws. I'm fat, my veins roll, blah blah. My bloodwork was scheduled for 11am yesterday and I've been working really hard on being super hydrated to make that, and the IV I'd need today for chemo easier. (My port/central line was on my sternum and was removed along with my mastectomy because we all thought I was done with chemo at that point.) I've got a lot of good motivation - remember that blood transfusion? They had to go into my wrist, they couldn't even find anything on the back of my hand. It throbbed the entire time the infusion was happening (four hours, five?).
So I've been setting timers and taking ten sips of water every 15 minutes while I sit at my computer. That plus my morning coffee and smoothie are worth 60-80 oz a day. Yesterday was a huge success. Easiest stick I've had for a while on a blood draw - she only had to try twice.
My bloodwork came back good - everything within normal limits now. I'm not anemic for the first time in six months.
So today I went in for my infusion. Ann (the nurse) apologized when I came in because she realized it would take longer than the 20 minutes she mentioned yesterday on the phone - typically carbo is given weekly with taxol - but I've already had taxol, so I get three times as much once every three weeks. So she revised that time up to an hour plus pre-meds, but that's still shorter than anything else I've done by a long shot.
She found a vein inside the crook of my right arm and set up the IV for the pre-meds (steroid, benedryl, zofran to prevent nausea). It hurt going in and when she started the drip it kept on hurting much like the transfusion in my wrist did. We went over it and she determined that the drips were going where they were supposed to and that living with that pain for another 90 minutes or so was preferable to trying again on a different spot (my choice and she didn't argue), and that if any did leak out of the vein the drugs I was getting today wouldn't damage the surrounding tissue.
So she came back 20 minutes later and switched the pre-meds out for the carbo which goes into a pump to push the injection harder. She set that up and walked away. I was sitting in the infusion chair (like a big recliner with side tables) with my jacket over me because it was freezing in there. I knew something was wrong about 30 seconds in, the pain was going up exponentially and my hand was throbbing too. I told Bob to go get her and when I pulled my jacket off I had a tennis ball quickly growing to a baseball on my right forearm. HOLY CRAP did that hurt. Stupid, stunned me didn't think to pinch the line to stop the input, it just kept getting bigger and hurting more. By the time Bob got her back in there (couldn't have been more than 90 seconds but it felt like forever) I was crying from the pain and my arm was just throbbing from wrist to elbow.
Short story - the pump plus the bad stick blew my vein out. Fortunately I didn't have any kind of reaction to the drug at all beyond the physical response of all that fluid leaking out in one spot. Another nurse came running and she brought me vicodin and an ice pack. I sat with that for half an hour, watching some of the swelling go down and waiting for the meds to kick in, and then we went looking for another spot. We did the rest of the infusion at one third the speed, straight into the back of my right hand. And we'll start there for the next three as well.
The good news is that so far I'm barely feeling anything else from the carbo. Maybe this thing is just a giant distraction. I feel a little off but other than running upstairs to pee every half hour I was fine to sit on the couch and watch good-to-moderately-trashy TV for a few hours tonight and ate a reasonable dinner. At the moment I'm on zofran (nausea), compazine (also nausea, I overlap the two for the first 48 hours), percocet, neurontin, and whatever's left of the steroid from the pre-meds. It's enough that while I feel pretty loopy and wouldn't dare drive a car right now, I'm not tired. My arm is still a bit swollen, but I think I'd probably have to point it out for someone to notice. It's still throbbing from my elbow into my hand though. And the anti-nausea meds, the pain meds, the daily iron supplement I have to take, and the carbo itself will all make me constipated. But that is a bridge to jump off another day.
While today has really sucked, it didn't trigger more depression for me. This is a one-off. I know what to do to prevent it next time, and I've got three weeks to get over this one. I'll be fine.
Added bonus, my incisions have healed enough in the underarm area that I wore deodorant for the first time since January 20 today. I am sure a lot more people than just me appreciate that.
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