There was always a feeling of uncertainty. Uncertainty of what was to come, the things that could happen along the way, the outcome of every new thing that was thrown my way. Nothing can really prepare you for all that can happen after learning that you have cancer. Not only did I never know what to expect but I also had no idea what chemotherapy was. All I knew was that it was used to treat cancer. Chemo and cancer, what a heavy alliteration. Hearing one usually means hearing the other and can change a person's life either temporarily or permanently.
Not knowing anything about chemo meant that I had a lot to learn in a short amount of time. I always thought that chemo was one specific drug, but it actually refers to a cocktail of drugs that doctors feel will be the best combination for killing the cancer cells. Two of the drugs that I was given were Cytarabine (ara-C) and Idarubicin (Idamycin), which are common for AML treatment, or at least at that time.
For my type of cancer, Acute Myelogenous (Myeloid) Leukemia, there were different stages of chemotherapy. The first stage was the Induction Phase. The goal of this stage was to kill all of the leukemia cells from the blood and reduce the number of blast cells, which are immature cells, to a normal range and put the cancer into remission. This was a very intense stage because of the large doses of drugs that were administered. The weeks that followed were equally intense. Since chemo does not just target the bad cells, but instead kills all the cells in your body, including the ones that support your immune system, it is very important to protect yourself against germs. A simple infection, like a virus from someone visiting who may not even know they are sick, can lead to many complications and possible death since the immune system cannot fight off the infections. When people find this part out they tend not to visit to reduce the risk of unknowingly passing on a virus, which tends to lead to a lot of isolation and alone time. Understandable.
Fortunately for me the induction chemo put my cancer into remission. If remission does not occur with the induction phase, more chemo is given until remission is achieved.
So, I got to relax in a hospital room for the month while my blood counts regained strength in numbers with nurses coming in every 4 hours, day and night, to get my vital signs, a lab person coming in every morning around 4am and sometimes during the day to poke me for blood, a flock of doctors, interns, med students, etc. cramming into my room every morning around 7am to see how I was doing and to let me know about all the exciting things the day would contain. It was all very exciting. Plus there was that delightful and delicious hospital food. Just in case you could not make up your mind between the two decisions you had to choose from for each meal, it did not really matter because you had the next week to try the other option. Yup, every week had the same option for each day in that week.
Unfortunately the hospital food was not good, AT ALL. Breakfast was alright, you cannot really screw up cereal, right? I learned early on never to order anything that needed to be cooked if you actually wanted to eat that morning. Eggs always tasted like silly putty/rubber, toast was soggy by the time it made it to my room and pancakes were similar to eating cardboard. The oatmeal was alright once you added a few packets of sugar and luckily there was a kitchenette on the unit floor so that I could get toast, along with several other goodies whenever I wanted. Good thing there were several other restaurants around the area so that I could ask my mom to run down and get me something that was edible, at least when I was feeling up to eating.
Chemotherapy kind of ruins a person's appetite. Even if something actually tasted good, which was rare since chemo also wipes out your taste buds, it is never good coming back up. Medicine has come a long way in helping with the side effects of chemo, especially when it comes to treating the nausea. However, all the Zofran in the world can not keep some people from giving up their lunch. It was the best med that I received for helping reduce the nausea, but it did not always help. Sometimes it just gets bad enough where nothing can help settle the stomach, even if it doesn't have anything in it.
It definitely was not the best of times, but it also would not be the last time of feeling like I was hit by a mac truck. I still had 4 rounds of consolidation therapy ahead of me after I made it through the induction phase.
Consolidation phase is needed to kill the remaining cancer cells. Without this phase the leukemia is likely to return. I will give a brief description of this since there will be even more in the future about everything. This is the follow-up stage. After my counts rose and were back in the normal range I started my first out of four rounds. For a week I would be admitted to the hospital to receive a week of consolidation chemo. Once that week was up I was released and sent home to wait for my counts to drop. If at anytime during this point I developed a fever of 100.5 or above I had to get to the emergency room and back to the cities because the fever meant infection, which was life threatening. I usually wound up back in the hospital after a week of being home. With each round, it took even longer for my counts to rise back up to a range where it was safe enough to start the next round of consolidation chemo and each round was harder and harder to get through. Each round has a story of its' own, a story to be told in future posts. They are not light stories, but then again this is a rather heavy topic.
Lotza love!
