I was scheduled to have the third dose of Abraxane yesterday. I'd been complaining of low back pain and pain in my right leg all weekend, so on Monday I didn't feel dafe driving myself. What if I had more mets and was in danger of a fracture? I'd already been lucky the first time that I experienced the pathological fracture while at home and not walking the dog, driving the car, or out and about elsewhere.
So Rik drove me and I arrived extra early at 8 AM (for my 9:30 lab appointment). The lab saw me pretty quickly, but again there was a computer problem with the orders Dr G wrote and "signed" electronically while I was sitting in the room with him. The SCI nurse called his office more than a few times; his staff paged him but he didn't answer; and in the end it was almost 1 PM before they could start any of the treatment. Thankfully my friend T was there to keep me company the whole time. We got some lovely borscht and pieroshkies for lunch and eventually I got everything: Decadron the steroid, Zofran for nausea and Abraxane.
In the middle of all this I was of course still in pain. On Sunday I had taken the maximum permitted amount of Vicodin with really limited pain relief. On Monday to took two Vicodin at 8:30 Am and two more at 1:30 PM but the pain only got worse. Dr G wrote orders for morphine but I recalled that morphiine didn't help too much with pain last summer. So I ended up taking intravenous Dilaudid. Between that and a hot compress, my back pain soon eased.
The Dilaudid made feel both loopy and me nauseous and I vomited several times by the time I finished the Abraxane. So I got some Ativan for the nausea. T gave me a ride to Dr G, who wanted to see me about the pain issue. (Thankfully no vomiting in the car.) Rik met us there.
I explained all the Dr G and he sent me off for immediate spinal xrays. Given that it was 5 PM by this point and he couldn't reach an in-house radiologist, he viewed the films himself. There is an ambivalent area in my sacraum (where we already know I have mets). My pain was radiating from the lower right to the right leg and even making the skin tender to the touch, much in the way that pain from the sciatic nerve behaves. So it might be sciatica or it might be mets. Dr G wrote prescriptions for Fentanyl patches and for ketorolac (Toradol), a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, and we went into the Minor and James pharmacy to get them.
While we were waiting, in runs Dr G. He'd reached a radiologist at Swedish hospital who confirmed that there was no danger of an immediate fracture (which would have been the reason not to send me home). He'd placed a call to my orthopedist, Daniel Flugstad, and promised to contact me today with Flugstad's take on things.
We had a mutual hug fest right there in the pharmacy -- Dr G hugs Rik, Rik hugs me, Dr G and I look tearfully into each other's eyes. No hugging, it's not frumkeit for unrelated men and women to touch outside of the doctor-patient examination. For him, not for me. But the tearful glances of relief more than make up for any lack of hugs.
Rik and I finally arrived home around 6:30 PM. I stuck the first Fentanyl patch on my arm, got undressed, ate a snack and went to bed. With Dilaudid, Ativan, and now Fentanyl in my system, I could barely stand upright. I slept well all night and woke up rested this morning.
And now for the latest news. I still have back pain. I wasn't sure at first, as it's been creeping up on me slowly all morning. I felt fine in the shower, eating breakfast, even walking the dog for a few blocks. But sitting at the computer typing and talking with the health insurance companies about bills, I've notived an increased in pain, even through the FEntanyl. So I took one of the ketorolac pills and will hope that takes care of any breakthrough pain.
I still don't have any more news about an appointment re gamma knife, but Dr G said his staff would take care of it. I learned this morning that Dr G has spoken with Dr Flugstad and am waiting for a call back from him with an update. I will, of course, report this morning's breakthrough pain. I called my primary care physican to keep her posted on all of the hoohah. And I will keep all of you posted as this comedy of errors continues.
Showing posts with label nausea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nausea. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
La Nausée dans le Métro
Nausea makes me feel gentle, compassionate toward everyone sitting with me. Slows me down. Makes it so I can't read on the L. I have to look. I feel sorry for people. The man with the bump in his nose with his head down. Somber. I feel open to others: the two boys with freckles and tan hair and baggy tan shorts in the two seats that hug the wall, their mother catty-cornered. The older one's (maybe 10?) eyes open, alert, waiting and watching for Grand. Finally, they're there and leave for the excitement that awaits them there.
Nausea can be subtle. You pay attention to yourself. Is it gone? Where is it? What was the matter again? What did I feel? It comes back when you're unaware. There it is again. Pressing against the soft palate, the nape. Back again, inside the head, between the nape and the palate. Alighting as softly as a moth. Now somewhere down the throat.
I had La Nausée Monday night (threw up--not so subtle) and the next day. Tuesday morning I went to the drugstore to pick up Effexor, which had been waiting there for me for a few days. I'd kept meaning to pick it up. Monday night I was going to, but then there was the chance to see Metropolis at the Music Box, in all its restored silent-movie science-fiction proto-Nazi benevolent-dictator-propagandistic Deco-Expressionist-melodramatic glory.
It ended at 11, after the pharmacy closed. At the CVS Tuesday morning, N, one of the few techs who has stayed there for years, was speaking casually in Spanish to a couple. When they left she got my Effexor and I said I had una pregunta por la farmacia--, happy that I remembered the word for question, since it's a cognate in French, which is usually the primary second-language that pops into my head. N corrected me: La farmacéutica, and I kept repeating it after her to capture all the syllables. I told la farmacéutica (in English) that I had felt nauseated, and that I'd run out of Effexor for a couple of days, and I was thinking the two were connected. Yes, she said, that's a symptom. Withdrawal.
I took the two big red capsules of Effexor with the water I'd brought (or brung, as we used to say in my Texas childhood) with me, and wanted to feel better immediately. I didn't. It took about 12 more hours to be entirely free of the nausea.
The stupidest illnesses are those that we can control. Nausea caused by sloth.
{Breugel the Elder, The Seven Deadly Sins]
Monday, March 26, 2007
Chemo..
...is not as bad as advertised, said the legendary journalist Harry Golden Jr., back in the late '80s. I interviewed him for a magazine profile when he was dying of cancer. Of the throat? The magazine soon died, too. He was still working as a beat reporter in Harold Washington's City Hall. Working for the Sun-Times. Dean of the City Hall newsroom. His editor told me he never complained about his medical treatment, never let it interfere. My story was nominated for a journalism award and I invited him to go to the awards dinner with me, but he died before we could. He was that close to death. He was small with sharp features and laughed like this: hahhahhhahahahahhahahhahahahha.
So far I will have to say the same. For today at least. Chemo began with the installation of a port below my collarbone, in the jugular vein. It's an underground tube with a hole so that I won't have to be stuck time and again by the nurses. I hope it's the right choice. L has a friend at work who had trouble with her port. I wanted one because Cancer Vixen's drawing hand started getting numb from the chemo needles. And when I was in the hospital for surgery I had an IV in my hand and it hurt during and for two weeks after. I learned from a nurse that after constantly poking the inside of the elbow you might have no good veins left. So I hope this port is a port for the good.
Yesterday when a hospital person called to tell me to fast for 12 hours and such, I told her I wanted an attending ("real") doctor to do the surgery. She said to tell the people today. I did and they said, This is the first we've heard of it, we don't know if we can do it, the doctors spend a lot of time supervising... But I got a real doctor, a very nice one who rattled off information but had time to listen, too. When I thanked him for making the time, he demurred, that that's what he does. For the first time in Fancy Hospital, I encountered no apprentices! It was liberating! I realized I should have told the nurse who made the appointment for me that I wanted a real live doctor. What a crazy world when it's an imposition to get senior staff to do the work.
In the prep room there was a fake skylight on the ceiling, lit with a photograph of cherry blossoms. The little rooms to left and right had different photos. A nice touch.
The doctor said it would be like dental work, where you don't feel pain but you feel pressure. I felt nothing. Or don't remember feeling anything. It was quite Proustian--awake and dreaming at the same time--I remember talking about numbers in dreams. The nurse said I also talked about flying in dreams. That sounded right.
Next was the recovery room, where I recovered quickly and ate last night's leftovers from Red Light with alacrity. Green beans, basmati brown rice, kung pao tofu.
Then we were off to the 21st floor for the chemo. I thought it would be a room with three to five lounge chairs and ladies in varying stages of side effects. And then one day we would find out melodramatically why one person never came back. Instead, I was in a private room with a regular exam bed and a rocking chair, and the nurse gave me Ativan and some anti-nausea through the IV and then she "pushed in" the medicine, as she said, the Adriamycin in a syringe attached to the tube attached to the needle in the port. I couldn't feel much. I could see the Adriamaycin, which is red. Then more saline. Then it was over, after maybe 30 minutes.
We left with three prescriptions for pills to fight nausea. L and I picked them up later at the drug store. Two medicines are mandatory. One is optional. I asked the pharmacist if he knew anyone who went on chemo and didn't get nausea, and he just looked at me haplessly.
But I am hoping. I had some Indonesian ginger chews sent by a friend in Oakland and I am wearing the anti-motion-sickness wristband my sister sent me.
My sister also sent herself. She arrived yesterday afternoon and we sat around then walked around the neighborhood, finding a few crocuses. I showed her three-flat graystones that cost $1 million. Prices in Houston are much more modest. We had dinner with L's daughter for her birthday. It was the first time my step-daughter met her step-aunt.
My sister drove a borrowed car from the suburbs to pick me up this morning and we got to the Fancy Hospital parking lot in good time. She stayed with me as much as she was allowed to. She is very easy. I haven't spent much time with her alone, for years and years. She is cheerful, easily amused, calm and not irritable. She's a learning disabilities diagnostitian in a school and we talked about special ed and autistic kids. She's taking a class so she had to finish a paper for it, and fly home tomorrow to hand it in. We also talked about my mother, and about my sister's plans to hold both Passover seders at her house, for the first time ever. When my father was alive, he and I led the seders, using some feminist material I'd found in Ms.magazine. After he died in 1991, I led at least one family seder in Houston by myself every year, adding new tricks, checking out new haggadahs. I always thought the seders there couldn't go on without me. I think my constituents likened me to Castro. It seemed I would always be there, and never name a successor. This year I'm not going home; seems like too much coming on the heels of chemo. I will be a participant and not a leader in two seders here. We will see how it goes. I did warn my friend B that I would try to wrest control of the seder from him.
When I went to the Oriental Institute last week with a friend, I saw a display that said that there is no proof that the Jews were ever slaves in Egypt. Even the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary says it ain't necessarily so. Ah, well. Then we can universalize the slavery experience. Or treat it as metaphor.
Meanwhile I keep asking myself if I'm nauseated. Like poking at a bruise and seeing if it really hurts. Right now, I'm OK. Let's hope.
So far I will have to say the same. For today at least. Chemo began with the installation of a port below my collarbone, in the jugular vein. It's an underground tube with a hole so that I won't have to be stuck time and again by the nurses. I hope it's the right choice. L has a friend at work who had trouble with her port. I wanted one because Cancer Vixen's drawing hand started getting numb from the chemo needles. And when I was in the hospital for surgery I had an IV in my hand and it hurt during and for two weeks after. I learned from a nurse that after constantly poking the inside of the elbow you might have no good veins left. So I hope this port is a port for the good.
Yesterday when a hospital person called to tell me to fast for 12 hours and such, I told her I wanted an attending ("real") doctor to do the surgery. She said to tell the people today. I did and they said, This is the first we've heard of it, we don't know if we can do it, the doctors spend a lot of time supervising... But I got a real doctor, a very nice one who rattled off information but had time to listen, too. When I thanked him for making the time, he demurred, that that's what he does. For the first time in Fancy Hospital, I encountered no apprentices! It was liberating! I realized I should have told the nurse who made the appointment for me that I wanted a real live doctor. What a crazy world when it's an imposition to get senior staff to do the work.
In the prep room there was a fake skylight on the ceiling, lit with a photograph of cherry blossoms. The little rooms to left and right had different photos. A nice touch.
The doctor said it would be like dental work, where you don't feel pain but you feel pressure. I felt nothing. Or don't remember feeling anything. It was quite Proustian--awake and dreaming at the same time--I remember talking about numbers in dreams. The nurse said I also talked about flying in dreams. That sounded right.
Next was the recovery room, where I recovered quickly and ate last night's leftovers from Red Light with alacrity. Green beans, basmati brown rice, kung pao tofu.
Then we were off to the 21st floor for the chemo. I thought it would be a room with three to five lounge chairs and ladies in varying stages of side effects. And then one day we would find out melodramatically why one person never came back. Instead, I was in a private room with a regular exam bed and a rocking chair, and the nurse gave me Ativan and some anti-nausea through the IV and then she "pushed in" the medicine, as she said, the Adriamycin in a syringe attached to the tube attached to the needle in the port. I couldn't feel much. I could see the Adriamaycin, which is red. Then more saline. Then it was over, after maybe 30 minutes.
We left with three prescriptions for pills to fight nausea. L and I picked them up later at the drug store. Two medicines are mandatory. One is optional. I asked the pharmacist if he knew anyone who went on chemo and didn't get nausea, and he just looked at me haplessly.
But I am hoping. I had some Indonesian ginger chews sent by a friend in Oakland and I am wearing the anti-motion-sickness wristband my sister sent me.
My sister also sent herself. She arrived yesterday afternoon and we sat around then walked around the neighborhood, finding a few crocuses. I showed her three-flat graystones that cost $1 million. Prices in Houston are much more modest. We had dinner with L's daughter for her birthday. It was the first time my step-daughter met her step-aunt.
My sister drove a borrowed car from the suburbs to pick me up this morning and we got to the Fancy Hospital parking lot in good time. She stayed with me as much as she was allowed to. She is very easy. I haven't spent much time with her alone, for years and years. She is cheerful, easily amused, calm and not irritable. She's a learning disabilities diagnostitian in a school and we talked about special ed and autistic kids. She's taking a class so she had to finish a paper for it, and fly home tomorrow to hand it in. We also talked about my mother, and about my sister's plans to hold both Passover seders at her house, for the first time ever. When my father was alive, he and I led the seders, using some feminist material I'd found in Ms.magazine. After he died in 1991, I led at least one family seder in Houston by myself every year, adding new tricks, checking out new haggadahs. I always thought the seders there couldn't go on without me. I think my constituents likened me to Castro. It seemed I would always be there, and never name a successor. This year I'm not going home; seems like too much coming on the heels of chemo. I will be a participant and not a leader in two seders here. We will see how it goes. I did warn my friend B that I would try to wrest control of the seder from him.
When I went to the Oriental Institute last week with a friend, I saw a display that said that there is no proof that the Jews were ever slaves in Egypt. Even the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary says it ain't necessarily so. Ah, well. Then we can universalize the slavery experience. Or treat it as metaphor.
Meanwhile I keep asking myself if I'm nauseated. Like poking at a bruise and seeing if it really hurts. Right now, I'm OK. Let's hope.
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