Chemo Day 1

Warning if you don't really want to know how chemo effects you stop reading now.

I'm not going to sugar coat it, but today was good.

I arrived at the infusion center at 8:00 AM. They gave me a little tour of the place. Where the food and drinks was stored (because I trying not to eat any sugar I can't eat 90% of it). The bathroom, the nurses station, etc. They then sat Bridget and I down and gave us a bunch of material to read over about chemo and explained the procedure.

Then we started. My chemo is called R-CHOP. First they administered Rituximab.

Rituximab (Mabthera®) belongs to a group of drugs known as monoclonal antibodies. It is used to treat several different types of B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Monoclonal antibodies are used to try to destroy some types of cancer cells, while causing little harm to normal cells. They are designed to recognise certain proteins that are found on the surface of some cancer cells. The monoclonal antibody recognises the protein and locks onto it (like a key in a lock). This may then trigger the body’s immune system to attack the cancer cells and can sometimes make the cells destroy themselves

They start with a low dosage of the drug at first and then slowly increase the amount every 30 minutes. After the 3rd round my throat started feeling very sore and my nose started running. They stopped the treatment and gave me some hydrocortisone which lessened the soreness in my throat. Then the treatment was started again. It lasted until 2:00 PM.

Next I was given a anti-nausea medicine through the IV, sorry don't remember the name. It took about 30 minutes.

Next I was give Doxorubicin which is a chemo drug that is a red fluid injected in a big syringe. I had to suck on ice chips to constrict the blood vessels in my mouth to reduce the chance of mouth sores. This only took about 5 minutes.

Finally I was given Cyclophosphamide through the IV. This took about 30 minutes and I was all finished.

I have to take prednisolone, which is a steroid in pill form over the next 5 days. This revs up your immune system (the nurses words) and told me I would be very tired after I stoppled taking it.

OK, but how do you feel. Well the whole thing was pretty anticlimactic. I'm tired and my port site hurts and I have a headache, but not too bad. I had a lot of anxiety about what to expect which made it worse. As the drugs were going into me I kept waiting to feel bad. We will see what tomorrow brings and I will let you know about it.

My chair:


My view and TV: