Liquid diets and chemo treatments

November 28, 2009: I spent my Thanksgiving feeling sorry for myself. Terrible thing to do, I know. I need to just pick myself up by my bootstraps and make the most of this….it is just much harder than I thought it would be. I have been on this ‘non-chewing’ diet only for a few weeks and I’m already sick of it. My Thanksgiving meal looked like baby food, and technically was the consistency of baby food. Everything had to go through the blender. And since the nutritionist told me I should try eating protein (aka meat) I did. Note to self and all other people: never eat turkey after it has gone through the blender. This looks disgusting and actually tastes terrible.  I guess at least I was able to be with my family and have a few good laughs. Some things do keep my spirits up, and I know things are going to get more difficult once chemotherapy starts so I should try to change my attitude now.

December 7, 2009: Today I had a port-a-cath placed in my chest. This is done in order to allow for chemotherapy drugs to be administered into my blood stream without needing to kill the veins in my arm. This tiny little plastic piece was sutured into my chest, on the right side, and there is a little dilator (tube) that was placed into my right internal jugular vein. This procedure was supposed to be painless. I think they lied to me. I felt almost every part of this procedure and in fact it was quite painful.  I know usually they give patients more anesthesia, but because my neck and jaw area is so swollen they were afraid to give me the full amount. Something about not being able to get breathing tube down my throat if they needed to. So…I had some lidocaine placed on my skin to numb it and a tiny dose of local anesthesia. They left a needle accessing the port so that I could have my first chemotherapy session today, however, the surgery took so long that when I was finished the chemotherapy department was closed. 
So here I am in a hotel in Rochester trying to sleep, but my pectoralis muscles are sore from the procedure and I’m afraid to sleep because I have a needle stuck in my chest. The first round of chemotherapy will be tomorrow.

December 8, 2009: Today I had my first session of chemotherapy. The chemotherapy department is quite large and was very busy.  There were several rooms with big windows and each room has 8 reclining chairs. There were also 3 rooms that had hospital beds in them; today I was in one of those rooms.  Basically the nurse came in and accessed my port and started the first bag of cisplatin and then when that bag finished she brought in the bag of etoposide. My first session of chemotherapy was done after 3.5 hours. I have to go back tomorrow to have another treatment and then I get 2 weeks off before my next round. I feel pretty good so far, but they told me that the side effects are summative so they build up after each round.  I was told that my hair will probably fall out, nausea and vomiting are possible side effects as well. Infertility is also a possible side effect from these drugs, which I shouldn’t think about right now, but at the same time I know that I want to have kids someday. I guess we’ll just worry about that when I get to that stage in my life.