Mike's Chemotherapy for Follicular Cancer Experience

First I had an appointment with the oncologist PA [I will meet with the doctor who is taking over for the doctor who has been my oncologist thus far but left for a new job, on the next visit]. I got a basic checkup and she looked at my blood work.

• She said I was doing well and the blood work looked good.
• She told me the CT Scan does scan down into the pelvic area where there are quite a few lymph nodes, and that there was no activity there. She said they usually do not scan the legs because there are very few lymph nodes in the legs.
• She said my ankle swelling was probably due to the steroids and was nothing to be concerned about.
• She told me the hands shaking are part of the side effects
• She said I do not need extra iron, re: hemoglobin score. The low blood count is from the chemo drugs that affects the bone marrow cell production. My  hemoglobin level is 12.5. She said if it dropped below 8.0 they would have to do a blood transfusion.

My nurse that did the Chemotherapy Treatment was Sue. She was very nice, knowledgeable and kept a close eye on what was going on. The sequence of the Chemo Infusions this time was:

1. Saline solution was infused.
2. ‘Benadryl’ was infused: it did not get me drowsy
3. Rituvan- I initially felt an allergic reaction [eyes watery, sneezing] at the beginning of the infusion, but most of it went away after 10 minutes. She started the infusion rate at 100, then went up to 200. This infusion took the longest.
4. She infused some anti-nausea drugs through the IV.
5. Doxirubin- I ate 3 ice cream cones that we brought with us during  this infusion. My mouth was cold, but not frozen. I had no bad tastes or nausea We will see if my mouth was cold enough to stop the cold sores from forming. Next time we will bring some fruit ice pops, which should keep my mouth colder.
6. Vincristine was infused.
7. Cytophosphamide was infused.

After the Vincristine was infused and she started the Cytophosphamide infusion I had a reaction that involved: headache; sneezing; chest congestion; rapid eye movement; fuzzy vision; some nausea and dizziness. They came upon me very quickly! Ben called the nurse. She stopped the Cytophosphamide infusion, and flushed me with a saline solution.

Then she ran Pepcid, Benadryl and Adavan through the IV to counteract the allergic reaction.  All but the fuzzy vision & dizziness went away in a few minutes. Eventually all the side effects went away. She then lowered the infusion rate of the Cytophosphamide and everything was okay. The drugs she used to counteract the allergic reaction relaxed me, although I did not get tired. Note that the drugs used to counteract the allergic reaction made me quite forgetful for the remainder of the day. None of that has ever happened before. Because of this allergic reaction I was there almost an hour more. This total chemotherapy infusion to 6-3/4 hours.

Regarding Flossing, re: what the periodontitis questioned: If I do not floss regularly, don’t do it. Do not floss when my blood counts are low. If I do floss just be careful doing it.

This entry was posted on May 19, 2010 at 12:56 pm and is filed under My 4th Chemo Treatment. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: adavan, allergic reactions during chemotherapy, ankle swelling, benadryl, chemotherapy, Cytophosphamide, dizzyness, flossing, hands shaking, ice ceam, iron, pepcid