Bone Marrow and Chemo oh my!

As I'm sure most of you have been wondering -  I did survive cycle one-a and to date the worst thing I have ever done to or allowed my body be put through EVER.  Oh how naive I was on Monday when I came out of the PET/CT thinking that drinking that goo-like imitation pina colada would be the worst of my troubles.

To date, in my 24 years of existence on this earth I have never encountered anything so painful as a bone marrow biopsy. And then to boot, after the bone marrow biopsy, they then proceeded to give me my first treatment.

Before I get into to all the details, my nursing staff at Moakley 3, Nurse N and D have been such absolute super stars. N is amazing at what she does and so every conveniently placed me next to her station in case of any emergency - very smart woman. Also, to very much my pleasure, N was on the IV team for 10 years so knows how to deal with poor, thinning, collapsing veins like mine.

D, is a young, bubbly and very astute Hematology Nurse Practitioner that takes amazing bedside manner to a whole other level.  She is warm, kind and caring, everything you can ever really hope for when you are confronted with this kind of scenario head on.

So my day started very early on Monday morning at about 8:30 a.m. Mom and I moseyed over to the Moakley building and then the waiting began. I waited for a while and then was finally taken back into the clinic where Nancy put in IV number 1, took blood and sent everything over to the lab for running. During this waiting period, doctors came in and out to file all of my final paperwork on the chemo treatments, go over all of my drugs and then helped provide some general tips on getting through the next six months - essentially as I waited for my labs to come back I was lectured on Chemo 101.

As the afternoon continued to progress, the bone marrow is lurking in the background and then the time finally came! It was time to have my pelvic bone drilled into with ultimate hopes that the lymphoma hasn't spread into my marrow (this would obviously complicate things a bit). Now I'm hoping that most of you have never had to experience this and as I was on the near-verge of breaking my mother's hand as I held it in pain - I whimpered, this better not be anything like childbirth or you can certainly count me out!!!

The biopsy is truly a fascinating procedure because it is four layered:

1. numb the skin around the bone where you want to enter (I know I was in for it when these 5-7 injections hurt 
2. push the needle and break through the pelvic bone
3. remove fluid from the interior of the bone to place in one of the three test tubes sitting at my bedside and
4. scrape the inside of the bone for samples to accompany the fluid portion. 

D was bedside with me to do this procedure and since BMC is a teaching hospital so was the hematology resident that was on duty for the day. While I honor and appreciae the importance of hand's on learning, hearing every little bit and position can occasionally be overwhelming.

I'm sure you're thinking that from the four steps outlined above, it couldn't be SOOOO bad. Well believe you me, steps 2 and 3 had me screaming and crying for anyone that could possibly help me in the moment. Also, with D's guidance I tried to engage in some very deep yoga breaths, which actually did provide a bit of support, if you overlooked the pain that I was inflicting on my chest from my surgery last week.

FINALLY I was done with the bone marrow and made it very clear to both Dr. S and D that I had no intention of consenting for this great procedure to happen again :) I think once a lifetime is one too many for me.

In relation to everything that had happened already in one day, the first round of chemo seemed almost entirely anticlimactic. N brought in one of those XXXL ziplock bags FULL of medicine, all tagged with a bright pink label and black writing - I thought to myself, "At least someone over in the pharmacy has a sense of style and humor when picking labels - pink neon is still so in right now." So all of my bright pink-tagged medicine slowing made it's way into my suffering body.  The A, B and V of my treatments are all pushed into my IV by Nurse N and then the D is a drip over a one hour time. Apparently the D was way to strong for my poor weak veins because after changing the IV, reworking the amount of Saline drip into it, I still felt my left arm was on fire - it was terrible, but certainly a walk in the park compared to bone marrow! Dr. S. was pretty convinced that I was not leaving the clinic with 40 cc remaining so Nurse N worked her magic and made it tolerable for the next time around.

At about 5 p.m I was finally ready to come home from the clinic - HOORAY! and the second I walked in the door I feel asleep. M&B woke me up around 9:30 for dinner, I was awake for a few hours and then crashed again. Yesterday was an up day really leaning to deal with the nausea and trying to get handle on it it all.

We'll see where the rest of this weekend takes me - hopefully to pretty weather where the nausea is small.

Thanks for reading!
xxoxox

T