ROUND 3 OF CHEMO CAN GO JUMP OFF A BRIDGE

I try not to be overly dramatic while filling you in on my battle with leukemia but this current round of chemo is really doing me in. I have two oncologists – one that I see while in the hospital and one that I see at the office when I am not in the hospital. (Yes, thank you insurance for just making things more complicated for no good reason.) The office oncologist likes to give me very rosy-colored news. Dr. Wierman, my hospital oncologist, has a great bedside manner, is extremely smart, but tells you straight-up just how it is. As I came into the hospital this past Monday for my 1st round of maintenance chemo, the office oncologist said I would only be here for 6 days and that I would be sent home with meds. (That sounded great to me! I mean, why would leukemia treatment be difficult in any way?) ha ha ha…joke was on me.

As soon as I got admitted back into the hospital and was getting situated, Dr .Wierman (my awesome hospital oncologist) graced me with her presence. She first said that I should have been getting some type of chemo treatment during that time I was home. She was surprised that I had been home for a whole month in the first place. (That made me feel a bit uneasy, especially because I just had been following the orders of the other oncologist.)

As for my actual chemo, it is the same medicine Ara-C (or Cytarabine) that I had for my first two rounds of induction chemo. When I had Ara-C, the first times around, it went through my IV 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Now, I get it only for 1 hour, 12 hours apart, every other day. The kicker is that the dosage I am recieving now is over 100 times stronger than the first and second time around. This results in more intense and different side effects. That sounds like fun, right?! I immediately started feeling very nauseous and began throwing up. I have headaches, joint pain…and well I just feel like plain ole sh!t. I’m experiencing a hangover from an awesome night out that never really happened. Of course there are meds to help stop the throwing up and the pain but its just not a lot of fun. Today was the first day that I was able to post because I could actually make my eyes focus on the computer screen.