Chemo Day Won (1)
I woke up at 7am, brushed my teeth, and at 7:15am applied a liberal amount of topical lidocaine to my port site and covered it with a large bandage. This is key for infusion days. I put on some comfy clothes, gathered our whole cold capping kit, heated blanket, and cold mittens and booties. We were on the road by 7:50am.
I didn’t feel nervous as we arrived, or at least I didn’t think so. I went back to get weighed, then we went back to the private room. Private rooms are offered to those cold capping because we carry significantly more equipment. I laid in the bed propped up, we met with the nurse attending to me, and then I got a visit by my two nurses from the cancer center with a welcome bag and warm wishes. We got a tour of the infusion center, got shown patient bathrooms and guest bathrooms, and lastly the snack station 😍. We went back to the room and prepared to insert the IV into my port.
I was nervous for that! My blood pressure reading was a bit on the higher side, so yes I may have been nervous. Rightfully so. The nurse administered my pre meds which included a steroid, high dose Benadryl, and Pepcid I think. That Benny kicked in quick!!! And I don’t like it. I was sluggish, I couldn’t look at my phone, I just wanted to close my eyes. But we had to start capping 30 minutes before the chemo and it was time. God bless my husband for being committed to helping me do this. It’s a process and it had kind of a rough go the first time. I think there was too much opening of the cooler, because we threw in the freezer packs for the hands and feet. The Benadryl eventually wore off and I felt normal’ish again. Then nurse came in a few times to switch our the immuno therapy bag, and then the two different chemo bags. The entire process took about 3 hours, I was there a total of 4, and the last half hour was spent making sure I didn’t have a reaction to anything. Once we were good to go we packed up and left as soon as possible because I needed to keep capping at home.
This is me in full cap gear, I had to continue with the cold caps which are -30 degrees, and I wear them for 20 minutes before switching to a new cap. And yes those are baby socks protecting my ears and chin. The caps were not at all bad. Yeah it’s cold and my scalp went numb, but it wasn’t bad at all. I hope I’m doing it correctly because it’s suppose to be rather uncomfortable but I think I don’t feel it as bad because my hair is thick. The day carried on just like normal after my 7 hour day of cold capping completed at 5pm. It felt so good to take it off, the straps have to be super tight and under my chin is sooo sore. I was expecting to feel worse, but aside from my elevated blood sugar I felt fine. That damn steroid..my blood sugars were elevated to 200-250 for about 10 hours. This was somewhat expected as the same thing happened when I was given a steroid in the ER recently, but next week I may know better on how to combat this. My sugar didn’t come down until about 9:30pm. I was already asleep by that time and suffered a low blood sugar of 44 about 3am. Nothing a banana couldn’t fix. But I need to be careful about timing my insulin because if I feel any worse (nauseated or what not) I may not be able to eat. And that concluded my day. It felt like a win, but I know the more I get chemo the worse I may feel, but here’s to hoping I’m part of those few who feel pretty good most of the time. Thank you Jesus for a good day!
