I had my first chemotherapy session a couple of weeks ago at the new Cancer Treatment Center of Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California. While both the facility and the staff were wonderful unfortunately my initial session was not. As it states in my bio I am currently being treated for Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma using the R-CHOP combination of drugs (Actually, mine is more like "CHOP-R" as they administer the Rituxan last).
The administration of the chemo took quite a long time that first session. I arrived around 8:30 in the morning and the last drip dropped from the IV bag about 4 p.m. As I mentioned, the Rituxan was administered last and took almost 3 hours alone to fully enter my system. So by the time this was done I was really aching to leave and just get back home. My girlfriend went out to find the nurse so I could get unhooked from the IV and when she did I began to feel hot and nauseous as if I might vomit. I asked my other friend still in the room for the trash can in case I did. Leaning over the trash can with my baseball cap covering my eyes she asked me how I was feeling. When no response came she lifted my ball cap to find my eyes rolling back in my head a light "sneezing" sound coming instead of normal breathing! Needless to say she shouted for the nurse who came and was able to revive me very quickly. They kept me around for another hour monitoring my vital statistics and pumping me full of fluids. I guess if one is going to have some sort of negative reaction to the chemotherapy I had mine in the best of all places... INSIDE THE CANCER TREATMENT CENTER AT THE HOSPITAL!
When they finally let me go around 5 p.m. I felt a little weak but was able to walk to the car and have my girlfriend drive me home. I felt good to have survived the worst of it and was now going to get a solid night's rest. Or so I thought...
