First Day of Chemotherapy

I'm sure you have heard cancer stories before. Cancer is not easy. There's talk of how strong chemo is and how sometimes it can just wipe out a person. Having gone through radiation, I was expecting the same ordeal. A lot of sleeping was to be in my near future.

My first day of chemo began in the usual clinic. I come here for basically everything. Before taking the chemo, they have to make sure that my blood counts are all right. I don't see why. I had been told that chemo typically brings it down, so making sure they are up seems kind of redundant. (If I'm even using that word right.) Although, I'm not a doctor or know anything about the body, so I'm gonna put my trust in the people that should know what they're doing.

Once I was cleared, I was sent off to the main hospital. The fifth floor is where the patients of my clinic go to for anything and especially for chemos that required us to stay overnight in the hospital. I was wheeled into my room because I still have trouble with long distances and the main hospital is on the complete other side of the cancer institute. For this first one, I was brought in with my dad, since he drove me to my appointment. I got settled and they put me on my IV. Now, the reason why I was staying at the hospital was because the chemo I was taking was the first in its cycle. The beginning of each of my cycles begins with a chemo that last six hours through IV. The first chemo is always the roughest.

Chemotherapys have different side effects as do all medicine, but depending on the side effects determined how strong a chemo was. While taking radiation I took 4 weeks of a chemo called Vincristine at the same time. It's a quick chemo that only takes a minute to go through my IV. This chemo is not that strong, but the I did have one of the side effects, which is constipation. It fucking sucked. Like so much. I've never felt such stomach pain and pain in the stomach is the worst. At one point while I was in the hospital for it, I had to take morphine in order to handle the pain. But as long as you keep your colon in check then its a pretty harmless chemo.

The chemo I was preparing to take is not like that at all. Before taking it, I have to have an audiogram. A test that checks your hearing ability to determine where it is because this chemo can affect my hearing.Cisplatin, the chemo I was to take, can also messed up my kidneys with the amount of platinum it has. Another reason that I have to stay in the hospital is because it can give me delayed vomiting which is bad because the problem is that they could discharge me to my house, I end up vomiting, and I also end up dehydrating myself and go back to the hospital again.

Clearly I had cause for concern.

It didn't help that they had to hydrate me any time that I wasn't taking a medication or the chemo. Which is really annoying because it's a lot of peeing. The reason why this sucked was not the fact that I went every 20 minutes and could never get comfortable, no, it was the simple annoying fact that you have to bring the stupid IV pump with you since you were connected to it and those things are hard to navigate when you have no strength. I would always forget to plug it back it and it would set off an annoying alarm. This is only relaxed when I'm taking the chemo.

Since my mother had begun to work again, I had my father with me for this first time. I still can't really drive because I don't really have good peripherals so its safer for me to be driven around. Not that I would have gone to this thing alone. But maybe it was because I was with my mother 24/7 since the beginning of this, just the two of us, I started to wish that she could have not gone to work that day. I love my dad, but he's nothing like my mother, and when they came in that first time with the bag of Cisplatin, I really wish she was there.

This IV bag was not like the rest in the least. It's encased in a black covering they put chemical hazard signs placed on the bag, the door, and my IV pump so that everyone would know that I was taking Cisplatin. When the nurse connects it to your IV, they have to wear a blue covering on their clothes and put a small covering on you, in case it spills on either of us.

This was why I needed my mother. I turned towards my dad, scared. His eyes were a bit wide and he was closely watching the nurse. If my mother was there, she probably would have looked even more frightened and try to cheer me up. My father is a man of few words. I didn't and yet did want to see them connect me and the chemo. I have a morbid curiosity for things and this was something new. It turned out to not be as bad as I thought.

I didn't feel a thing. Nothing.

I was surprised. It felt like when I would just be hooked up with liquids. My mother came by after work, but that night I stayed alone at the hospital. I was wide awake. It was weird. I couldn't go to sleep. I didn't even sleep after the chemo ended at 2AM. I think I fell asleep at around 3:30AM. Hopefully. 

The next day the nurses kept asking me how I felt and making sure I drank water. I honestly felt fine. No need to throw up and no tiredness. These were good signs and my doctor discharged me that day. My only problem: the medicine that was proscribed to me. I have to take a drug called Neupogen which are injections that help push blood cells from my bone marrow, since they become low after chemo. This process hurts. I get a lot of muscle pain and I don't particularly like Neupogen. I'm not scared of needles, but this made me sick of them. I take this medicine for only 14 days after my first chemo, but it gets tiring getting stabbed every night.

This day marked the first before I can go back to a semi-normal life again.  Each week after, I just take Vincristine for two weeks and then I get a three week break before the next cycle begins. And so on, and so forth. Although there are 5 weeks that I do a different regimen.

In regimen B, I have to stay in the hospital for two nights for the first chemo. The chemo is only 4 hours long through IV, but I need hydration every 6 hours in between. Instead of two weeks of Vincristine,  I do only one with a two week break instead of three. Its not bad, actually pretty calm compared to regimen A. This was good for me because I had a plan.

Ever since I woke up from my surgeries I had been hoping and praying that I would be able to see my grandmother and brother, who live in Puerto Rico. Well the rest of my family lives there and I really wanted to see my family.

I had asked my doctor if I could go and visit. He gave me the go ahead as long as I took out a problematic tooth and had at least two weeks of break from my last chemo. This was easy to accomplish.

And accomplish them I did.

Only one way to go: UP

When we were living in the Ronald McDonald house, I had always hoped to leave the temporary home into a permanent one. It didn't quite work out that way, but close enough.

We spent a weekend staying at a hotel after we had left. This first one was the worst. It looked like just a typical hotel that seemed pretty cheap and wasn't any type of name brand. I had to use the elevator, for this was when I was still weak in the legs and I couldn't really handle stairs, but I never wished so hard for strength in my legs. The elevator was filthy. I don't know how this hotel could hide how disgusting it was. From outside appearances it looked a bit rundown, local, but bigger than a motel. It was an open hotel, no hallways. I washed my hands every time I make it to our room. Mind you, the room wasn't dirty per se, but there's a lingering filth in the air. Even the shower had that filth in the air feeling, even though it should be the cleanest of rooms.

But there was nothing to it. My mother hadn't been working for three months at this point and wasn't receiving pay. She had a couple of weeks before having to return back to work, which was why we were looking so far. My mother was not going to leave me in a hotel by myself especially in the state that I was in at this point. The only thing that made it better while we were looking for a home was the fact that at least we had a roof over our heads, a place to sleep, and a place to shower.

We spent the weekend there just looking for a place. In Kissimmee, a lot of people still just post the 'For Rent' side in their front yard instead of posting them on a site, like Craigslist. So, there was a lot of driving around. We made calls, but nothing ever worked out. It wasn't until we drove around in an area called 'Little Puerto Rico' that we made some progress. This place is called 'Little Puerto Rico' for the sheer amount of Puerto Ricans that live in this area. Some call it a ghetto, but its really just an old suburban neighborhood with a lot of riff raff that are still in school.

It was in this area that we saw a lot of signs, but when we called the rent was too much or they were checking for good credit which my mother didn't have. Like majority of the people in this economy, I always thought it was ridiculous requirement since no one has good credit. Then we called a house and they decided to just let us check out the house first before saying their requirements. This was okay, because we had already drove passed the house earlier and had an idea of what the house could look like. This house also happened to be a recommendation given to us by my mother's friends who also lived in the area. We went to the house and found out it was empty and ready to move-in. The house was a two bedroom, kitchen, living room, and one bathroom. It had a garage that half had been turned into a room and the other was still a garage, but smaller. The yard was extremely large, it used to house three trees. They cut down the two big ones and left the small orange tree. The porch had recently gotten a wooden roof put over the sliding doors entrance. the house was small, but bigger than any apartment we could have gotten. It also had a driveway that two cars could fit and its own mailbox. A regular old suburban household.

My mother fell in love with it. It was perfect for just the two of us. The owners were nice old folk who were both in retirement. The home belonged to the husband's, Bill's, parents before they died and passed it down to him. They had no need for the house and had been renting it to their son while he was attending college.

We told them of our situation of course. They sympathized, but really no one can understand what you are going through, unless they have been through it themselves. I don't know if it was because of our situation knowing we didn't have a lot of cash on hand or they just didn't care, but they were willing to let us bring my dog to the house with no pet deposit needed. We also had no application fee or credit check. All my mother needed was to have two good references. Overall, it was a good meet up and we were hopeful to get the house when we left.

The next day was my first appointment with my eye doctor. As you know, the surgeries had made my left eye turn in with my right following a couple days later. It was time to see what was in store for my eyes. Since my appointment was 45 minutes away and on a Monday, we left Sunday morning from that horrible hotel and made our way closer to the site. At the Denny's here there are a lot of coupon books of different things and when we left I grabbed one that had discounted hotel prices. I was lucky to find one next to where were going for really cheap at the Howard Johnson. Finally a decent hotel to stay in. One our way up, we received a call from my mom's boss. She was informing us that she had received a call from Bill, one of the owners of the house. Ten minutes later we got a call.

We got the house!

We were so excited! Finally! We finally had our own place!The next day (after my appointment0 we went to the house and gave the landlord the deposit and rent for the upcoming month. He knew we had no place to stay so he let us move in that day. Not that we had anything to move in at this moment. We simply went to the Wal-Mart nearby and bought an air mattress. That first night we slept on the floor, on our air mattress, together, in our empty living room (house). It was better than they shitty hotel.

The following days felt fast-forwarded, but full of the beginning of better days. We picked up my dog from my sister's place and slowly the rooms were filled with furniture. The spare room that used to be a garage, was made into an extra living room for me, where my computer, PS3, PS2, Wii, and Xbox360 live.Majority of appliances and furniture in my house is brand new. We were beginning all over from the bottom. The money we were expecting from my mother's cancer insurance she had for us (in case of anything) came in after we got the house, and what perfect timing. We received enough to buy the living room furniture and decorations. Some was spared for us to relax and let down our hairs (figuratively speaking on my part) by going to a popular dinner and show my mother never had the opportunity to go to. It only felt right to enjoy ourselves after dealing with the past six weeks.

My life was starting to come around. Things were going well, but it seemed it wouldn't last.

My first day of chemo was coming up.