Chemo Treatment 5 - Day 1

Yesterday (Monday June 28, 2021) was Christian's 5th chemo treatment. 

We arrived around 8:45am as usual, had her port accessed, and labs taken.
Then we waited in the lobby area until her pre-chemo appointment with Dr. Paluri.

The appointment with Dr. Paluri is where she has her vitals taken, and he looks at her lab results to make sure she is good to go for her treatment. Everything looked good. He also showed us some images of the Liver MRI in a split window view comparing this last MRI to the one she had done before beginning chemo. You could see the tumors in the liver had gotten a little smaller. It is nice to visually see that, along with being told in the reading that they have shrunk some. We also discussed the potential plan after treatments 5-8 are complete. It will really just depend on what the next set of scans & tumor board meeting result in.

After that, we were off to Pod D. We got a window seat which was nice. The pod nurses began to get the pre-meds together and ordered the chemo drugs from pharmacy. She got her pre-meds, and had several visitors. 

Some of her co-workers stopped in saying "yeah, we heard there was a celebrity here today.." lol. 
There were a lot of visitors during the treatment yesterday so I know she enjoyed that.
We were also brought some lunch as well. It is nice to have a big support family working there during the treatment.

All of that, is fantastic, and has become pretty normal for a treatment day. We are both very grateful for that. After the pre-meds were done and the chemo was started, that is when things went a little different this time. 

Usually on treatment day, she is fine thru the entire treatment, we get home and eat something, then she gets a little tired in the evening before bed. It usually does not start setting in hard until the middle of the next day.

Yesterday, about 5 minutes after she began receiving the Irinotecan (the first chemo drug to be administered), she began feeling tired. She napped on and off thru that drug, and had a couple visitors. The second drug (Oxaliplatin) was then started and she was very tired at that point. Same thing, some napping, and a couple visitors on and off. After that was complete, she was hooked up to the 5FU pump (Franklin the Fifth as she calls it) and we were able to go home. That was around 4:45. It was a full day. She was extremely tired then, and had some mild stomach cramping (a normal side effect).

When we got home, she laid on the couch and we watched some TV. Just interacting with her about stuff on tv, I could tell she did not want to talk, or move, or anything. She drank some warm blackberry tea and some water. I could tell she had never been this fatigued before, and it was surprising that is set in so soon to the treatment. She was not really hungry for dinner due to the crampy stomach. I will make her some breakfast this morning. I got her in the bed a little before 9, and put her phone on silent so she could get some rest. She is still asleep. 

I will give an update in a couple days unless something warrants one sooner. For now, she is just wiped out of energy completely, and feels like crap. No nausea, which is good.

I believe her next couple months will look something like this (subject to shift dates slightly):
July 12    Chemo Treatment 6
July 26    Chemo Treatment 7
Aug 9      Chemo Treatment 8
Aug 13    Liver MRI
Aug 16    CT Scan - Afterwards, meet with Dr. Paluri to discuss the scans
Aug 17    Tumor Board Meeting 12pm-1pm - Afterwards, Dr. Paluri will call to tell us the plan ahead

Thanks for all of the visitors, lunch, cards, thoughts & prayers, and everything else.