The week after chemo

The first week of chemo wasn't so bad...slept pretty much every day. About day four I was up for a few hours, slept a few hours and so on. This continued through days four through six. After that....the pain.

Back pain. OMG who knew it could be so bad? Roughly day eight... I was in bed but hadn't slept. The pain in my back was horrendous. Anyone who has never experienced back pain should not judge those who do. It is the most pain I have ever had. I got out of bed about 6 am and laid on the couch. It was painful to sit, stand, lay...anything. I found the "most comfortable" position I could on the couch and cried. Hoping the pain would just go away...wishing it away...

John got out of bed to let the dogs out and then went back to sleep. In my state of mind, and the amount of pain I was in I felt like he was ignoring me. I laid there until 7:30 and then called Rush. Told the nurse who answered the phone what was going on and she told me she would page my Dr.'s nurse because my Dr. was on vacation.

GREAT!! Anytime you need the Dr. aren't they always on vacation? Ughhhh... But, the nurse called me back within 5 minutes. At this point I was crying so hard from the pain that I couldn't talk. She kept asking me what was wrong and telling me I need to tell her what was going on. I finally was able to stop crying enough to say, "My back hurts so bad." She said, that's all you have to say...come in right now.

I went in the bedroom where Brigette was and told her I needed her to get up and take me to the hospital. Immediately she said OK. John heard me talking to Brigette and came out and asked me what was going on? I told him (Now remember, I am not in my right frame of mind) not to worry about me...MY DAUGHTER will take care of me. She will take me to the hospital. Poor John has no idea what the hell is going on and he is trying to tell me that he will take me to Rush if I need to go. This of course starts an argument for me.

I told him that he didn't care enough about me when he got up to let the dogs out to check on me that he didn't need to worry about taking me to the hospital. Well, I had no fight in me to tell him that he was not taking me...and so he did. Brigette must have thought I was nuts. LOL.

The ride to Rush was not a pleasant one. I had no comfort level at all. I was up and down the whole way, crying.

Once we got there I couldn't make it to the "chemo room" fast enough. The nurses were waiting there for me to help. They hooked me up to an IV immediately and started pushing fluids and medications. As soon as they started to push the meds, I got sick. Throwing up. Not fun...but as soon as I was done throwing up, I fell asleep. Yay! Little did I know that when I got there my blood pressure was extremely low. Even with all the pain I was in, it was still low and they were worried. But after they did everything they needed to, it came back to almost a normal level for me and I was able to go home. With a huge laundry list of medications to take.

It took a few days for the pain to subside to normal level...but they really did help me out a ton. The rest of the time between chemo 1 and 2 was pretty uneventful.

THANK GOD