The Big Update. Part 2

It took awhile to wrap my head around the first dose of chemo before I could write about it. After the first week of treatment was over, it felt as though six months of my life had been taken away. Like I had been put into the torture device from The Princess Bride and Christopher Guest was just leaning over me saying "I have just taken a year from your life, tell me how you feel."

After the first day Vickie was fine. It seemed like maybe this wouldn't be so bad, that we could manage this pretty easy. The next day after Vickie felt the same and she was up doing things, feeling tired but okay. The day after that it began. The pain started creeping up on her slowly, like a mountain lion stalking a hiker with three loud children covered in bits of trail mix. Luckily she had plenty of pain medication, right? Well yes, she had a lot of anti-nausea and a pain killer that took the edge off, but never really alleviating any pain. So as Vickie didn't really rest as much as she should have, thinking it wasn't going to get her down, the pain came slowly but when it arrived it took hold and didn't let up, like an extra from Reefer Madness.

Vickie got her first dose on a Tuesday. Thursday the pain started and by Friday at lunch I came home from work to find her sobbing in bed from the pain. What the hell do you do? You can't shout at the damn cancer. You cant fight it. You have to learn to deal with it. Well we were failing at dealing with it, so we needed to do something different. By the time we realized that the pain killers weren't pain killing Vickie was in dire straights. She called about getting a change in medication but by the time we changed it up the pain had taken over. The new pain medication was no match for the mountain it needed to overcome. On Sunday night I had taken my kids over to my grandfathers community pool. I usually don't go swimming on Sunday but when it's over 103 degrees outside, well all bets are off. When I was driving home I got a call that my Mother was driving Vickie to the ER. I dropped off the kids as quick as I could and drove out there to relieve my mom. We ended up at the ER because Vickie was not only in pain, but a fever had flared up. When you have a fever while on chemo a 100.5 degree fever in actuality is a 105 degree fever. I got there and Vickie was already in a room, in pain. The Doctors had to wait until they did a bunch of tests before they would give her any heavier medicine. Luckily that only took around 4 hours. It was 4 hours of massive back pain for Vickie and hours of getting whatever I could for her. Or at least getting the nurses to get her whatever they could. FInally after hours of waiting the tests were in and she got the pain meds she needed to get the back spasms to go away.

It seemed like a nasty government psychological test to see how much the human brain can withstand before it turns on itself. 

The next day we got Vickie a full body massage and a neck adjustment. That seemed to do the trick. But we were still kind of perplexed to why she had such a bad reaction to the chemo. It seemed more harsh than what the doctors told us it would be. After her massage the dude said she has quite a few knots and perhaps the chemo made her nerve endings more sensitive. This sensitivity made them ache with immense pain. Or whatever. Who knows? The doctors also said it may be that Vickie had "fallen to the communists" and it was wreaking havoc in the inside of her. Makes sense. During that time women's hormones and body chemistry are going mental, take that with the chemicals of chemotherapy and that can only be a cocktail of disaster. 

Now it's over. the first dosage I mean. She's gone through a second dose with not nearly as bad of a result. Time will tell how nasty it will get...