~ Seeing the chemo drug running down the tube into my blood vein, I felt I was killing myself ~
At the Oncologist’s
I arrived at Dr. Ma’s clinic before noon. The treatment room had a total of 6 chairs, a couple of them were already occupied by patients. The nurses were very professional helping me with the preparation work. I was calm not panicking. Though I really hated needles; I always screamed when having injections even when I was at my teenage. I had to turn my head away when the nurse was looking for the best vein for the IV. The big girl me did not scream this time. It was painful though.
The Button was Pressed
Everything was set, the nurse put up a bag of chemo drug fluid which was going to go into by body through IV in the next 2 hours. The drug that was dripping into my body was 220mg of Oxaliplatin.
I decided to go for chemotherapy believing that the drug would help shrinking the tumor. Yet the whole process was a stranger to me, every step I took was my first experience and sometimes it felt like a misery. After all, chemo drugs are chemicals, they are toxin and they harm the body at different aspects and at different levels while trying to attack the tumor. I was not struggling too much to make the decision but I know deep down I was struggling with the decision.
I looked up to see drops of toxin slowing coming down into my blood vein. I was not feeling anything yet physically only feeling bizarre at this moment that I was sitting down comfortably to let toxin going into my body.
The Discomfort
I was not very well prepared for the day, did not think of getting lunch for example. The nurse was so kind to order a sandwich for me. I put on my headphone to watch some YouTube videos waiting for the two hours to pass. About half way through, I started to feel the numbness and pain of my left hand where my heparin block (HB) was. Apparently this numbness and pain were side effects caused by the chemo drug. The nurse had already given me a warm pad to cover my hand while the IV was on. I did feel better.
However, the warm pad was not able to maintain a constant temperature. Sometimes when the pad was not warm enough, the numbness and the pain would get severe. It was tough like millions of ants biting my hand. The nurse got me another warm pad but it did not work out any better. That numbness and the pain made the remaining 45 minutes difficult to go through.
First Chemo Was Done
At round 4pm, the IV was finished. I got out of the treatment room waiting at the reception for medication to take home. I was feeling ok except that the numbness of my hand exhausted me a bit. The nurse told me that my hands would become sensitive to coldness in the coming week, which should be eased out after a week or two. I had to stay away from coldness such as taking things from the fridge and I had to wear gloves when going out; it was November so it could be quite cool during some days.
I was prescribed with a big bag of oral chemo drug Xeloda 3,500 mg per day for two weeks. This alone was 98 pills to swallow. I was also given pills for nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea as standby for the possible side effects after chemotherapy.
On The Way Home
Yan my dear friend was so kind to pick me up from the clinic and accompanied me to take a taxi home. It was rush hour when we walked out of China Building to go to the taxi stand. I was surrounded with noise but I was feeling like I was deaf that I heard nothing but was just thinking about what I had gone through this afternoon and what I had to expect in the next couple weeks to come before I had to do this again 3 more times.
I started to feel tired as we walked slowly among the busy crowd. It was not exactly but I thought of this drama series “walking dead”, not exactly but feeling as if the world was not the same but couldn’t tell how. The walk to the taxi stand only took a few minutes but it was like walking on a strange unknown path going to nowhere.
