Chemo #2

Day 1 of the second round of chemo started off fine today. Felt great this morning and yesterday, better than I have since Sept. 21st, the day before the diagnosis. It was great to know I could recover so completely, if only briefly.
Since Jayson had come home Sunday night, he and Mara came with me. Tony got the day off (to rake leaves and do other fun stuff like that.)
The first glitch was the pre-chemo nausea drug they give. My wonderful insurance company won't pay for the $1,000 Aloxi that I had the first time. I don't know whether we'll have to fight with them over it. I just know we got a notice saying it is not in their formulary. So the Infusion Center went to a back-up drug, Zofran, instead. They give it for 20 minutes, just ahead of the first of two chemo drugs: Taxotere.
Five minutes into the Taxotere, though, I got a reaction, even though I'd had the same thing at the same infusion rate three weeks ago with no problem. But today, I felt very peculiar, got sweaty and clammy, blood pressure dropped, felt nauseous, had fairly severe lower back pain (not where the adrenal tumor is but classic lower back -- the muscles had seized in response. On a scale of 0-10, it was about a 7. Nurses & doctors are always asking patients to rate their pain level.)
As soon as it started, I asked Mara to get the nurse, who came running. She immediately stopped the Taxotere, called the doctor, and gave me a shot (maybe of a steroid, I'm not quite sure) to stop the allergic reaction. It took about five minutes to work.
Luckily, also, the doctor happened to be just down the hall in his office, rather than over in the hospital, so he too came quickly. He sat with me for about 10 minutes, listened to my lungs, and discussed the options. He could switch to another drug, Olympta?, if needed. But I hated the idea of having to leave the first-choice drug for a back-up. So we decided to give me 30 minutes to fully recover, and then try the Taxotere again at half the infusion speed. I didn't care that it would take twice as long. I wanted to be able to tolerate the first-choice drug.
So the nurse started it back up. Five minutes into this second try, I thought I started feeling weird again and asked Mara to get the nurse again. She came right away and stopped it again, but even in the minute or so it took to do that, I didn't continue to feel bad. I think I was just nervous, being overly vigilant, so I had her turn the Taxotere back on. She sat with me for about 10 minutes, just to be sure all was well. It was. We finished the Taxotere and then went on to the Carboplatinum, which does not cause the reactions that the Tax drugs do. Whew!
While Sunkin was sitting with me, he told me about a patient with a very similar cancer whose tumor(s) had shrunk dramatically on these drugs. Very, very nice to hear. He also ordered an additional blood test as part of the regular work-up that will give him some info on how the tumors are doing.
In the meantime, I still have a little bit of hair, but not enough to go anywhere. So I am learning how to wrap a smallish Pashmina shawl into a kind of turban. My mother bought half a dozen colors from a street vendor. I guess I'll alternate with the wig, once I really have no hair -- in the next day or two.
My hope with this second round of chemo is that because I am going into it in much better shape than I was for the first round, that it won't knock me out quite so much, and because I know what to expect.
Although with today's experience, I guess I need expect the unexpected.