Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Actinomycin-D IV Treatments

Okay, I know what some of you may be thinking after reading my last posting, girl can't spell worth a lick. That's right, I spelled the name of my new treatment wrong. Sorry!!! Spell check didn't have a clue either and that's my story and I'm sticking to it!!!!

After checking my schedule (I'm a very busy person . . . yeah right!) I decided that I didn't want to wait a week to start the new treatment and as of 4:15 yesterday afternoon, I am now under going a once every two week treatment of IV injected Actinomycin-D. During the course of treatment that lasted between 45-60 minutes from start to finish, I was given an anti-nausea medicine and steroids. Due to the steroids, I've been awake since 4:30 after sleeping really well last night despite the constant drewll I kept rolling over in. Did I spell drewll right, spell check has not idea!! Or is it druell, I have no clue. Let's call it a small pools of spittle for safeties sake. Added to the nighttime puddles, I'm sure small fish could survive in, my allergies have become 10 times worse since starting chemo, with a few small but annoying nose bleeds thrown into the mix for some added fun and at times, a seeming constant drip of nasal products and what I'm sure it world record setting sneezes. If I'm going to suffer, so are you!!!!

But on the bright side I went ahead and took a nausea pill this morning to get ahead of any up coming relationship that may be in store for me and the porcelain bowl better known as the toilet!!

On a scale of 1-10, I'd rate my overall feeling around a 7, my eyes seem more sensitive to bright lights and am currently wearing sunglass at 10 till 7 in the morning as I type this. I've also expericing a low grade, high level annoying headache that's been coming and going since before I went to sleep and since I've been awake. Strangly enough, the glasses seem to help a smidgen' with this. The eye bones connected to the head bone, come on, you know you want to sing along.

I did learn something interesting yesterday, that along with myself, there are 2 other patients with GTD being treatment by the same group I am. One lady needed to have a hysterectomy after treatments failed to bring her to the "0" range and from what I understand she is now in remission. Another lady started her Actinomycin the Friday prior to my Tuesday because her Methotrexate didn't work either. According to the nurse, who NEVER named names or violated patient confidentiality in any way, they treated 8 , yes 8 patients last year alone for GTD!!!!! Seems to me like this cancer is more prevalent than we're being led to believe and I want to encourage our scientist to learn more and to gather more data updating the statistics surrounding this heartless disease.

Here's to more research and less upchucking . . . sorry TMI!!! Can't help myself. ;)