How is it already Saturday? Time has been passing so oddly lately what with me not really having a schedule. I'm getting really bored and antsy. I can't believe I miss school as much as I do. I really don't know what to do with myself once the initial chemo exhaustion is over with. I cannot wait until it's nice out! I want to go for lots of walks all day and not have my face hurt from the cold.
Chemo on Monday went well. It seemed like there were quite a few people at the infusion center getting chemotherapy there for the first time. I had my first chemo while I was in the hospital, so it was my first time there and it was really nice. They somehow managed to create a really laid back, welcoming atmosphere. And I was up five pounds from when they weighed me last, so mum and Aaron's efforts to fatten me up have been working! I think some of that was making up for weight lost from the 8 days I was in the hospital since I kind of failed at eating and had several days where I wasn't allowed to eat since I had surgical stuff done.
The steroid they gave me as a premed for nausea made me super hungry the day of chemo and I ended up eating too much that day, which didn't work in my favor. I had a bit of extreme nausea, which made me have a mini panic attack as vomiting is my least favorite thing in the world, which, in turn, made me feel like I was going to vomit even more. I took some Ativan, which helps with both anxiety and nausea, and eventually felt better and passed out sitting up. Thank goodness for drugs that work!
I had a new side effect this time around. Two days after chemo my tongue, back of my mouth and cheeks started hurting really badly. We called the oncology center and the nurse thought it was too early for mouth sores to develop and was concerned it might be strep or something, but it wasn't in my throat at all, so she prescribed a lidocaine mouthwash for the pain. Of course, my pharmacy didn't have all the components to make it, which made the nurse very angry at the pharmacy, which was kind of funny. We had it sent to the hospital pharmacy instead and my mom picked it up. I ended up not needing it, but it's nice to know I have it should it happen again. I was eating warm soup while getting chemo, so I wonder if that made the cells in my mouth more metabolically active so they took up more of the chemo drugs? I know there have been some studies done on women who really didn't want to lose their hair who wore icy cold caps on their heads during chemo to slow the metabolism in those cells and those women lost less hair. Next chemo session, I'm going to try to eat a lot of ice and no warm foods to see what happens.
Speaking of hair, mine is starting to fall out. It hasn't noticeably thinned but it's so annoying since I constantly have stray hairs everywhere.
Goonies is on, so I think I'm done for the night.
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