Not Dead Yet !: side-effects

Monday, I start the next round of five days chemo. On the bright side, it's just a matter of waking up at home and swallowing pills. Easy enough.

This week, I move up to my highest dose ever. During radiation treatment I took 140mg of this chemo, every day for seven weeks. With no nasty side-effects. (Being tired is not "nasty".) When radiation was finished I moved up to 300mg chemo five days in a row, then nothing for three weeks. I was sick for the first two days then stopped that by judicious timing of a "mild" anti-nausea pill.

This Monday, I move up to 400mg for each of five days.

This drug has a known side-effect of "nausea". To me, nausea is that feeling you get when you want to be sick -- to vomit -- but nothing happens. Nothing happens -- but you wish it would. Your stomach is in turmoil, your head is in sympathetic turmoil. You may be able to lie down -- but the fear of chundering means that you don't relax. All you can do is to sit -- or stand -- or walk -- until, finally, you are actually sick. Face down in the toilet, wasting your last meal.

I've been sea-sick. Being sea-sick is my understanding of nausea. It's awful. That's not the way that this chemo affects me.

Monday, I take a "mild anti-nausea" tablet. Wait a while (as instructed). Take my chemo. Go back to bed.

The chemo has to be swallowed on an empty stomach. Then there is no eating for at least half an hour. I find it easiest to wake up in the wee small hours of the morning, take the pills, go back to bed again.

So I sleep. Wake up as the radio alarm wakes Deb up. Lie in bed listening to the news. Think, Uh oh... and go to the downstairs toilet to be sick.

No nausea. Just a feeling -- a one-minute warning -- of impending vomit. My stomach indicates impending eruption. My mouth starts to drool. I have plenty of time to prepare. Which I do...

And the rest of the morning is pretty much similar. Except that I stay downstairs... within easy reach of the toilet.

Deb goes to work. I stay home... close to the toilet. Actual food has had time to digest, it passes through in the normal fashion. Well, the first lot is normal. The next lot is mostly liquid. At least it's going in the correct direction. What I vomit is very small quantities of clear, tasteless... stuff.

As the morning progresses, I vomit less often. In between, I sit and read and sleep. With longer gaps between being sick I am relaxed enough to sleep more and more.

About 1:30 I start to eat again... a couple of dry crackers. No worries. I try a scone, it stays down. By dinner-time I am eating normally, though less than usual. (See, it's not all bad!) And in between eating -- I sleep... From "lunch-time" till I go to bed I may have been awake for an hour or two. When I go to bed -- I sleep soundly.

Until it's time to start again...

Tuesday: I wake up just after 3am. Get up to take my daily dose of pills. Find that rain has seeped in and dribbled down the light over the meals-area table. Mumble grumble. I look for the source of the leak -- no luck. Oh well, the rain has stopped, for now.

I swallow a more powerful anti-nausea tablet. Wait the required time. Swallow 400mg of chemo.

I may go back to bed for an hour or so. Or I may just sit downstairs... near the toilet... while I wait to find out if the more powerful anti-nausea drug has a more effective effect.

And on the bright side: it's only five days of chemo. Then I have three weeks' break, before the next five days.

For the next few days I'll either manage the "nausea" side-effects -- or put up with it. And if I sleep for most of each day? Well... no worries at all :-)

Dr Nick Lethbridge / Consulting Dexitroboper

... Agamedes Consulting / Problems ? Solved

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