That Was An Interesting Start

Yes­ter­day was Donna’s 4th and final chemo ses­sion. I went with her for her first and was going to go to all them, but she rather I just drop her off, come get her after­wards and then spend the after­noon with her. This worked for ses­sions 2 and 3. It was a good plan because for the first two ses­sions she didn’t start to feel bad until later in the after­noon. We even went out to eat lunch together those 2 days. But dur­ing chemo num­ber 3 she started to feel punk­ish part way through, so she asked if I’d come with her for the last one. To which I read­ily agreed.

We went out to eat break­fast at the New Moon as usual, she had a bagel and I got one of their giant muffins. We fin­ish the paper and headed over to the can­cer cen­ter. The first thing they before any­thing is take some blood and analyse it to see if it is good enough to be zapped down with the chemo drugs. Her num­bers came in great, every­thing was in the nor­mal range with even one a lit­tle high. The num­bers might even have been bet­ter than the ones that were from before the first ses­sion. Donna set­tled in the recliner, I got comfy in a chair beside her and he nurse got the IV started. First up in the IV is saline to keep her hydrated and then they start an anti-nausea agent before they get to the real juice. Donna has always brought some light snacks to nib­ble on dur­ing the treat­ments and this morn­ing she ate some water­melon pieces first thing.

Not two min­utes after fin­ish­ing the water­melon Donna reached for the trash can near the chair and threw it right back up. The nurse ran off to get some tow­els to clean up and I got her a wet paper towel to sooth her fore­head. Just about the time we got every­thing set­tled back down, Donna grabbed the can again and Mr. bagel joined the water­melon. This, all the while she is get­ting the anti-nausea med­i­cine in the IV! The nurse went off for a cou­ple more tow­els and brought back the doc­tor. The doc­tor came in and said, “OK, you are not feel­ing good we’ll post­pone the chemo until Mon­day or Tues­day.” Donna said, “NO WAY! I’m here let’s get the show on the road.” He said, “Maybe it is just nerves. If you want the chemo now, fine.” She said maybe it was nerves, but she really hadn’t been feel­ing well since Wednes­day and now that she had thrown up she felt pretty good.

After that inter­est­ing start, things went smoothly for the rest of the session.