Flash frozen in the chemo suite

So, here I am blogging live from the chemo suite at Atlanta Cancer Care.

If you’ve never been in one of these places before, it’s a big L-shaped room with 25 or 30 green, brown, or black vinyl-covered recliners (made by La-Z-Boy, notably). Next to each is a small folding table and an IV pole with a box about halfway up and a couple bags at the top. In front of each is another chair for visitors. In between each is a green, hospital-type privacy curtain, but nobody seems to be interested in using them.

At the conjunction of the two legs of the L, on the inside, is a big desk, which is essentially a giant nurses station with a half-dozen or so nurses manning it at all times.

One thing for sure – it’s a popular place. There aren’t many unoccupied chairs that I can see.

So if you’re a patient getting treatment, there’s at least one bag with a tube or two running into the machine, which automagically adjusts the dosages on whatever time schedule you’re on. Coming out of the machine is a final tube that, for everyone I’ve seen, leads into a port, either installed in the chest or upper arm.

Need to go somewhere? Unplug the box from the wall, and haul all your stuff with you.

One of the things I’ve dealt with is a near-constant need to pee, so I’m getting used to getting up and down and wandering about with the box and tree.

Today’s adventures are about the “R” in R-CHOP, a drug called Rituxan. Apparently if you’re going to have a reaction to one of the 5 drugs in the cocktail, this is the one. Common side effects are fever and chills. So day 1 of R-CHOP chemo is just R, dripped slowly over several hours to see how you do with it.

Well, I was doing fine with it for a couple hours, and then I wasn’t. All of a sudden I was freezing cold, shivering, and then nauseated. Seemingly at the same time, my pain meds wore off, too, so I had a massive headache as well. And of course, I had forgotten my pain meds.

So they just off the Rituxan for a while, dosed me with some other stuff, and got me some pain meds from the pharmacy. I feel okay right now, but I had about 30 minutes of abject misery – the kind of thing that makes you realize why chemo sucks.

But it sure beats cancer.