I'm off for my third chemo cycle today. Well, chemotherapy is tomorrow, heading to Halifax today at some point. Our car has taken a turn for the worse and is in the garage so now I'm waiting for Amy to chauffeur me around. Hurray for family!
The R-CHOP part of the chemotherapy should all be standard. I get super sleepy and spacey from the Benedryl but other than that, I don't expect any side-effects to hit until the end of the week.
However, the one new thing that they'll be doing tomorrow and for the following 5 sessions is a spinal injection of one of the chemotherapy drugs into my spinal fluid. Last treatment the doctor rambled off all the areas where the lymphoma is located in my body and said that I had three options to prevent it from moving into my spinal fluid.
The first option was to have a different drug concoction infusion between my chemotherapy doses which was ruled out as I crashed so bad after my first dose that she didn't feel my body could handle more meds. The second option was to have this spinal tap for the next 6 treatments. The third option was to wait until my treatments were over and have 6 spinal taps in a two week period immediately afterward. She thought that option two was the best and I really had no real choice but to agree.
Apparently this is a 'common' procedure that they do with a lot of people with lymphoma as a preventative measure. As once the lymphoma gets into the spinal fluid, treatment becomes "very difficult" (quote from the doctor), as though it's been super easy so far. I don't want to see what "very difficult" looks like.
I'm quite nervous as I am about any new medical procedure. Everyone claims that the freezing is the worst part. I've heard that too many times to really believe them but I remain hopeful. I'll let you know if it's true. Maybe they'll inject it while I'm knocked out from the Benedryl so I won't notice it at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment