I know I could have just gone into my last post and edited some things out straight from there, but I decided to just do a new post about my medication regimen and dosage. Long story short, somewhere along the way, there was a communication misunderstanding between myself and my parents and my doctor who is overseeing my chemo treatment. Trust me, everything seems to be sorted out now and we did THOROUGHLY question the dosage misunderstanding by having the nurse actually call my doctor at 1:45 in the morning to make sure what he had written on the instructions for the nurses who administered my chemo was in fact, correct.
Anyway, the differences I speak of is really in the LENGTH of time I was administered the chemo medication, NOT in the AMOUNT of chemo I received. I posted previously that I would be receiving the chemo medication for 24 hours straight. That was not the case. I started receiving my chemo through my PICC line shortly after a 15-minute span of receiving anti-nausea medication in preparation for for the chemo. The chemo started promptly at 2:15 am (which is technically on Wednesday). Rather than that dripping for 24 hours like we originally thought, that was administered for only 4 hours, bringing us to 6:15 am. What we may had been getting confused when speaking with the doctors and nurses in the past was that number of 24 hours which comes into play now... When my chemo meds ended at 6:15 am on Wednesday, it would be 24 hours to the minute until I would start receiving my anti-dote to the chemo treatment, call Leucovorin. In the meantime during those 24 hours yesterday, I received more of the sodium bicarbonate fluid that hydrates me -- I think I said in my last post that it was saline being used to hydrate me. Details, people!!
**Side note: Above I mentioned that the discrepancy between the chemo medication was in the LENGTH of time I received it rather than the AMOUNT I received. Let me explain that further: No matter how long I would have received my chemo drip overnight on Wednesday, I would have received the same amount. The longer the period is, however, the more the medication is diluted with saline or another fluid or it is dripped slower. They sometimes administer the chemo medication over longer periods of time when they don’t know how a person will react to the medication or the person reacts negatively to the treatment and are experiencing more side effects or the person is a child with a lower body mass and therefore is expected not to handle the medication well.
Soooo if you're following along, you would know that as of this morning, (Thursday the 6th), at 6:15am, I received my first injection of the Leucovorin medication. Again, this is the anti-dote to the chemo medication and what it does is to help restore some of the "good blood cells" that the chemo kills along with the "bad" cancer cells. I got this medication through the PICC line again, but this time rather than letting it drip through the IV, my nurse administered it through what they call a "push". The appropriate amount of medication was pushed into my IV through a syringe and this took all of 3 minutes to do. It might sound painful to have this pushed, but it wasn't all.
A brief thing to mention here is that my blood was taken right before the Leucovorin went in, to test my blood cell levels and see how much of the chemo medication was still in my body at that time. Blood testing will not be done again unless they were too low this morning and I need to stay here LONGER than expected. (Again, this is all very touch and go with my admittance and discharge from the hospital, but everyone here knows what they’re doing). I need to get 6 dosages of Leucovorin every 6 hours by IV through my PICC line before I can leave the hospital. Math time again!! If I received by first dose of that at 6:15 on Thursday morning, when will I receive my LAST dosage?? If you guessed 12:15pm tomorrow the 7th you are CORRECT! Let's all do it together now... #1 at 6:15am Thursday, #2 at 12:15pm Thursday, #3 at 6:15pm Thursday, #4 at 12:15am Friday, #5 at 6:15am Friday and #6 at 12:15pm Friday the 7th of January. By that time, I technically should be getting ready to leave the hospital, but at this point you know as well as me that things don't always run so smoothly. The staff also needs to make sure that I am adequately hydrated at that time and that my blood levels are at the appropriate place to exit the building, (they should know that by 12:15pm tomorrow because of the blood test results done this morning). Once every last medication is administered through my IV, however, they still need to remove my PICC line. Plus, at some point we need to be discharged and given instructions for next week and the week after that! So again, you don't actually know when I'll be leaving on Friday. It sounds like early afternoon, but who knows!
Stay tuned for updates about yesterday Wednesday January 5th which was my first day of chemo treatment. It was a very tiring day complete with no sleep the night before, a spinal tap and (only one!) episode of vomiting. Hopefully I’ll have that up later today after I take a walk around the floor and nap for a little!
xoxo,
*Casey
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