Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Chemo Treatment #2
11:10 PM
My second dose of chemo drugs are now moving through my system killing good and bad cells. What an adventure this is. Since Ken is in San Diego with Kedrick and Kalyn my good friend, Paty, took me to the infusion center. We went early so I could have my blood draw and the test done “stat”. That turned out to be a big mistake. I learned that the day after a holiday is a very busy day for the lab and a test that should take about 15 min. to run took over an hour and a half.
After the blood draw, we were off to Erik’s Deli for a sandwich before returning to the clinic and the infusion center. My nurse, Jane, was very patient as she called the lab and tried to track down my lab results. The clinic will not begin the infusion process until they know the white and red blood cell count. Once my results were in, yes – I passed with flying colors, it was time to find out if my port was working.
After removing a steri-stripe and cleaning my skin, it was time for the big moment. The special needle was inserted into my port and it worked. Praise the Lord!!! What a blessing to be able to receive my infusion via the port. That was such a relief.
Once we knew the port worked, the first of the two pre-drugs were hung on the IV pole and I was ready to go. It takes 40 minutes to get the three pre-drugs into my system. Next was the Adriamycin which is “pushed” into the system via a 250 cc syringe. After two syringes of Adriamycin it was time to hang the IV bag of Cytoxan and wait for the hour while it was being infused. I think the nurse was very pleased when the pump sounded the alarm letting her know that the infusion was complete. After letting the last few drops run into my vein it was time to flush the port and remove the IV needle. A Winnie-the-Pooh band aid was the finishing touch to complete infusion number two. Just think: I’m half way done.
Kedrick began his competition at NITOC today. He had two different competition patterns to participate in, and presented all five of the speeches today. He will compete tomorrow and Thursday. An announcement will be made Thursday evening which will let him know if he will move to the next level of competing. Thank you for the prayers, he is feeling better. I’ll try to keep the blog posted on how he is doing.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Subscribe To
Posts
Comments
0 comments:
Post a Comment