Chemo #7
January 9, 2002

Lots of waiting. It took about 3 hours this time becuase it was pretty busy. This whole chemo thing is pretty popular. Nothing worth mentionning. This was the least painful start of an IV I've ever had, though. Or maybe my arms are so angry with me, they cease to feel pain. Either way, I'm happy.

I got new anti-nausea drugs for this go. I'm back on decadron which I had for chemo #1. It gets me hungry and sometimes a little wired which is nice for a change. I also got another drug called Naboline (I think). It's a pill form of marijuana. I haven't used it yet since I guess the side effects can be pretty weird. But I'll tell you how that goes if I use it.

I was pretty tired and gross feeling when I got home. I started getting chills as soon as I was home and couldn't get myself warm. At about 8:30 I decided to go to bed but my face was hot so I took my temperature. It was a stunning 101.4 degrees farenheit (ferenheit? feryn height?). In the cancer patient book it says to call a doctor immediately if you run a temperature over 100.4 degrees. The roads were really bad that night so we decided to skip going to the cancer center in Ottawa (an hour away almost) and just went to the local hospital (3 minutes away). My temperature was at 39 degrees celcius there and no one was really quite sure what to do with me so the doctor on called called the oncologist on call at the hospital in ottawa and after a bunch of returned phone calls, etc... it was decided that they'd do some blood tests and give me a litre of saline through IV plus some other drug that starts with C. If my blood counts came back bad, I'd have to go all the way into Ottawa and get dealt with there but luckily they were OK and the saline + drugs brought my temperature down to 37.6 degrees (normal). Then to top it off I got sent home with a prescription for Cipro to kill the infection they assume triggered my fever. They just don't know what or where the infection is. I spent about three and a half hours in the hospital but 2 days later my temperature is still normal but I've been feeling a little more worn out than normal. It's definitely something I hope I don't have to go through again.

So it's January 11 as I write this. Normal pukiness, a little more tiredness but overall happy that I've hopefully only got to do this five more times. I really hope so.