Weekend After Chemo

Quartermaster/Ship’s Surgeon Crystal here with your weekend update.

You know how people are nicer to you when you’re sick? Well, apparently Kona received this memo shortly after Dave was diagnosed with cancer. Kona, as some of you may know, is not what you’d call a nice dog. Words typically used to describe Kona include: feral, asshole, aloof, and manipulative (to get cheese). However, since Dave’s diagnosis Kona has turned into quite the therapy dog. He now lays next to Dave on the couch and seeks his affection. Too bad he’s not the kind of therapy dog that can sniff out tumors.
 

 
So, how did our first day of chemotherapy go? When we returned from our 8.5 hour hospital appointment, Dave was feeling awesome. No kidding, we were seriously considering hitting up Southpaw – our local hot spot with delicious draft beers and kielbasa. That sounded like a great idea for about 5 mins before we finally decided we were tired and opted for a frozen stuffed crust pizza. We call them “emergency pizzas”, reserved for desperate times when we have nothing decent to cook and don’t feel like going out.

About two hours later Dave said he stomach felt funny. This quickly progressed to chills, profuse sweating, and severe nausea. Sounds super scary. Some of you may wonder why I didn’t immediately rush him to the ER. In short, he was breathing fine, these were known side effects of the chemo, and we had an arsenal of drugs to treat his symptoms. Speaking of drugs….

I went from begging my pill-avoidant husband to take an occasional Advil or Tums and now am in the position to ensure he takes all the above, every day, multiple times per day. The only thing Dave hates more than pills? SHOTS! He hates shots, hates having his blood drawn, and is grossed out by anything related to medical procedures. This is why I can’t watch Grey’s Anatomy. Dave has stopped asking me how my day was at work because he knows I will gleefully tell him a grotesque story from the ER as he is cooking our stir fry and ruin his appetite. Who doesn’t want to hear about a patient who’s hand lost a battle with a circular saw?

Anyway. Dave is now forced to take copious amounts of drugs including a nightly injection. So many that I had to make an excel sheet to keep track of them all. You gotta be organized when you’re on this kind of regimen. Chemotherapy is essentially toxic sludge being pumped into your body at a painfully slow rate over the course of a day so that your body doesn’t completely freak out. Rituxan, the R in R-CHOP, has a half-life of ~ 32 days. To give you a comparison, drugs I administer in the ER have a half life of seconds, minutes, or a few hours. This means the nasty side effects are gonna linger long after we leave the infusion clinic. Nausea is the most notable symptom of chemotherapy and is especially prevalent in this more aggressive form of chemo. Dave has five or so meds just to treat nausea, several to treat pain, and some meds to treat side effects of other meds. Managing these medications is not as simple as following the directions on the bottle. For example, Oxycodone, a powerful narcotic, is necessary to treat his bone pain and does so at the expense of nausea, sleepiness, and constipation. He then has to take two additional meds to counteract the side effects of the one pain med. This puts him in a predicament of choosing between tolerating pain or treating pain and accepting the associated baggage.

There are benefits of these drugs, besides the obviously cancer killing ability. Prednisone, a glucocorticosteroid, has a wide range of indications outside of the oncology realm. Dave was prescribed 100mg/day for 5 days following chemo and it has almost entirely removed the inflammation around the tumor site. His knee previously had no definition because it was just a swollen hot mess. As the tumor grows, it exerts more and more pressure on the surrounding bone, tissue, and pain receptors causing him a great deal of pain and limiting his range of motion – it now looks very similar to his other knee. Pretty freakin’ exciting considering we still have at least 5 more cycles of chemo ( 5 cycles x 3 weeks each = 18 weeks).

By now, you probably have a picture in your mind of Dave laying on the couch in his underwear watching TV as I force pills down this throat. Well, that does accurately describe the past hour or so (it’s Sunday), but it is not representative of our normal day to day. Dave has been very energetic the past few days, even taking the dogs for walks and keeping up on his nightly trash duties (he says he was thrown in the garbage can as a child and won’t let me touch it). We joined Bobby last night for a dinner and a movie at Cineapolis. We enjoyed half-priced tapas at Sammy Woodfired Pizza and followed it up with what I’m sure will be the most gory movie of the year, The Equalizer. Great flick with lots of blood and violence. Denzel is still the man and I swear he hasn’t aged since Fallen (1998).

Looks like things are back to normal this week. Dave is going back to work tomorrow and the pups will be at doggy daycare – Kona hasn’t seen his girlfriend in a few days. I have an interesting week planned, starting with class all day tomorrow. Tuesday, I’ll be teaching basic infant care to new mommies at Headstart with the aid of translator and conducting home visits with Oceanside Public Health. Wednesday, I’ll be at the VA working with patients with skin cancer and will finish the week in the ER on Thursday and Friday.

Thank you all for your colorful comments! We really do enjoy reading them and appreciate all of your support. We have some witty people in this family that’s for sure! If you have any questions or a topic you’re interested in – let us know.

XOXO Crystal, Dave, Kona, and Boomer