GI Update and Taxol 10/12

March 2020: I woke up with a sore throat. I had no other symptoms. No fever. No cough. No malaise. Nothing. I was extremely worried I had COVID, but that wasn’t it. After talking to a few people I decided it was heartburn. I adjusted my diet, stopped taking ibuprofen like it was my candy, and did a round of omeprazole. The heartburn got better so I went about my life feeling superior that I self-diagnosed myself correctly.

Fall 2020: I started having intermit left upper-quadrant pain. There was no real rhyme or reason behind it. I decided it was either heartburn or a gastric ulcer. I named the ulcer Glenda. To try and tame Glenda, I did another round of omeprazole and tightened things up again diet and medication wise. Then I promptly put off addressing Glenda until I was on break in between travel nurse contracts. I knew what was wrong, just needed confirmation and guidance on what and how to treat it.

That plan didn’t exactly pan out as I got the cancer diagnosis. Glenda got pushed to the back burner. There was no point in addressing Glenda if I was going to be dead from cancer. Glenda didn’t like being avoided though and she started to get real mad. Chemo is known to cause ulcers and heartburn, and boy was Glenda back with a vengeance once I started that.

Things had slowed down a bit by this point, so I decided since I had met two deductibles already it was time to confirm Glenda was actually something and address the issue. I met with GI and switched from omeprazole to protoxin. That switch alone almost completely solved the heartburn problem, which was magical, but I decided to go ahead with the scope anyway for three reasons: 1) I had already met my insurance deductible; 2) while doing the scope, they could do a fancy procedure called an endoscopic ultrasound that allows one to look at the pancreas. My pancreas needs close monitoring as my genetic mutation causes pancreatic cancer; and 3) I’m stubborn and wanted to be proven right about Glenda.

SCOPE TIME

Last Wednesday, Mitch and I arrived to Methodist for my procedure. Methodist had built a shiny new GI surgical suite about two or three years ago and it’s still pretty fancy. Each patient has their own bathroom, which I thought was really impressive and smart for a GI group. The other nice part was we waited no more than five minutes for anything. It was very quick which is always appreciated.

One minor hiccup was my port. A port has three little dots on it that forms a triangle when you “connect the dots.” One puts the needle right in the middle of this triangle and the port is accessed. On me, one can not feel the dots. A skilled worker knows to just trace the port itself and go in the middle when the dots can not be felt, but even then sometimes it doesn’t work.

Luckily for me, I’ve had very skilled people accessing my port and haven’t had any issues until the GI lab. The nurse attempted to access my port, but it wouldn’t work. I think she missed it, caught the edge of it, or wasn’t in deep enough. I’m really not sure. I just know it wouldn’t work. There are little tricks one can use such as coughing, arms over head, turning on the left side, to try and get the port to work, but I was not in the mood for all that. I politely asked her to just do an IV and luckily she was respectful of that request. Now here I got a pretty good laugh. She used a hot pack to make my already large veins pop up, wrapped my arm in a towel before putting on the tourniquet, and used a 22 gauge needle. She obviously had no problems with getting the IV to work, but it reminded me how different emergency medicine is versus everywhere else. I still can’t stop chuckling over the 22 gauge needle and it was the first thing I said to my sister when I called her to talk results.

IV in place, Mitch was allowed to come back and give me a quick kiss goodnight and then off I went to Propofol land. GI did their thing and then I woke up. I tried to scare the nurses by grabbing my head and said “AHHHHH Where’s my hair!” but they weren’t too amused with me. Could be because they were in to tell me the biggest surprise of my life….NO EVIDENCE OF GLENDA! Everything was in tip top shape! Nothing was wrong. No reason as to why I have this left upper-quadrant pain. I felt quite silly, frustrated, and confused. For now there’s no answer and no plan moving forward either. I have a coloscopy scheduled for late August. I don’t think that will give us any answers about this, but I was convinced I knew about Glenda so maybe I’ll be proven wrong again. All I know for certain is that the protoxin helped my heartburn so at least it wasn’t all for naut.

Lead up to chemo

Thursday brought round 10/12 of chemo and it turned out to be my most emotional one yet. Chemo was scheduled for later in the day at 12:30 pm arrival, which meant my normal driver Emily couldn’t take me. Since that’s normally the time I get picked up from being done with chemo and Grandma has been picking me up these last few weeks, she offered to take me to chemo instead.

A bit of backstory here: when I was diagnosed, the only person I was nervous to tell was my grandma. Not only because I know I’m her favorite (*bald hair flip*), but also because Grandma lost her only son to pancreatic cancer at a young age. She was very involved with my Uncle Neal’s cancer and I was worried about the trauma and feelings it would bring up for her. I wanted her involved with my care, but didn’t want to push too hard. I didn’t get much of a chance to push anyway because shortly after I was diagnosed grandma had some health issues slow her down for a few months, so it’s only been this summer that she has gotten more involved in my care and helping drive me around. Just like when I was a kid going to summer camp, except camp chemo isn’t as much fun.

So grandma picks me up Thursday and we go to lunch at Jason’s Deli. Here we had a bit of an emotional talk about how she, Mitch, and I are all coping with my diagnosis. It wasn’t one of the warm and fuzzy conversations we normally have, but so necessary to healing and working through this. Cancer is scary, unknown, and frustrating. Its important to address and feel those things or it will be manifested into something worse eventually. Unresolved trauma has been shown to directly affect the the body, manifesting real symptoms. Google it. I don’t have the energy to explain it all right now.

Chemo

I got to Methodist and phlebotomy accessed my port. I told them about the issues GI had, but they had no issues getting me accessed which was a relief. I went to my pre-chemo appointment with the nurse practioner and realized I forgot to wear my tattoo! Even without my tattoo everything checked out with the NP and off to chemo I went.

At chemo, my steroids went in fine but when nurse Brittany (my favorite nurse) went to do the Benadryl it really burned and hurt. Which was rather scary. She stopped the infusion and checked my port, but it still drew back blood and flushed easily so we wrote it off as the port just being sensitive from the GI lab attempts and kept a close eye on it.

At this point, I’m not sure what was going on with me but I got real emotional. I was all out of sorts from having chemo later in the day, not seeing Dr. Wells because she was on vacation, my port being problematic and I just was feeling very over chemo even before the day even started. So what does a totally well balanced and level headed nurse turned patient do? Silently cries in the chemo chair by herself.

I sat their with tears slowly coming down my face wishing Mitch was there to hold me. I looked around the room to see if I saw anyone with a friendly face to dump my emotions on, which I didn’t. And I wasn’t actually going to do that because everybody in that room has enough to deal with already. I considered facetiming or calling someone, but I knew that would turn into a full blown hysterical crying which I really didn’t feel like doing in the middle of the infusion room. So I sat there with my emotions. I felt them. I cried. I did some deep breathing. I waited for the Ativan to kick in. Either my efforts, the Ativan, or a combination of both worked and stopped me from going into full blown hysterics which I’m grateful for. I’d rather lose my shit in the comfort of my own home.

Nurse Stacey’s spidey senses must have been tingling, because she stopped by shortly after I had myself somewhat put together and that helped a lot. I wonder if she knew I was having a rough time. I can’t remember if I told her or not. Another thing that helped was when I was browsing facebook to distract me, I saw that a sorority sister was across the room getting an infusion too! So I stopped and talked to her after I was done which was nice.

Weekend

Friday morning I went and had brunch with a sorority sister which was nice. It is in those moments, with fellow fighters, survivors, thrivers, that I feel like I can really just put my guard down. The burden of cancer isn’t so heavy when I’m with others who get it. We talked all about those pesky feelings and it helped me to start work through them more. Cancer is the gift that keeps on giving!

Saturday I was really excited to go to the Douglas County Fair. Mitch and I went early, but it was rather depressing. There were only like a dozen vendors. A few animals to pet. Just overall lack luster. Even though it wasn’t impressive it was so nice to get out of the house and do something not cancer related. Just being out and doing an activity, even one that didn’t meet expectations, was great for my mental heath.

Sunday morning, Mitch and I took the dogs to the Field Club Trail and walked that. I wanted to make it 15 minutes each way, but that wasn’t happening. I made it 15 minutes total but again, even though expectations were not met, I still enjoyed just being out and not “cancer girl” as my breastie says.

End of the Cycle/Start of the week

Monday I was so excited because I got a mani/pedi with an old friend/coworker. We reminisced on old times and talked future plans. She talked to me about all things not cancer, which was weird for me at first but then very comforting. It’s nice to be treated “normal,” even though I haven’t felt that way in so long.

Tuesday I may have overdone it a bit. A strange coping mechanism I developed a few weeks back was entering contests. One of those contests we won! A free photo shoot at C41. I had been wanting to do a photoshoot with Mitch prior to my surgery so it was perfect! I got my makeup done and we went to the shoot. We got some very moving and beautiful shots I can’t wait to share with you in a few weeks! It was a huge confidence boost too and highly suggest anyone with cancer to do.

Tuesday evening my Uncle was in town so he stopped by for a quick visit. This meant staying up a little later than my normal bedtime, but I had taken a nap so I thought this over doing it would be okay. HA! Was I quite wrong! I woke up today, Wednesday, with quite a bit of pain, mostly bone pain, and exhaustion. How one can wake up exhausted is a mystery, but here we are….making all sorts of sense.

Gearing up for 11/12

So here we are. It’s Wednesday, the day before my 11/12 chemo. It’s gone so fast and yet so slow. It’s bitter sweet but that is a topic for a whole separate blog post that I’m sure will come out next week. Hopefully with my copy editor back, but no promises on that one. Somebody has to bring home the bacon after all! I’m off to rest and gear up for tomorrow. This time I’ll remember the tattoo!