This past Thursday was to be the start of my 2nd major chemo cycle starting with 2 bags of magnesium, followed by a bag of Taxol and topping it all off with a bag of Carboplatin. Jeff, my husband, and I went out to lunch before heading to the hospital and I mentioned to him on the way out of the restaurant that I had a funny feeling about this treatment. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I wasn’t feeling real positive about it.

So we headed into the treatment center and waited for our recliner to open up for our afternoon stay. As planned I was started on 2 bags (back to back) of magnesium and then the 8 pills which precedes the Taxol. All was going well. Around 2:40pm my sister Dawn arrived to take the next shift and relieve Jeff for the afternoon. She went to the cafeteria and got a scoop of egg salad for me (I love eggs) and a water for herself. Around 4:00pm I was done with the Taxol and in came the two nurses to hook me up to the Carbo. Drip, drip…one trip to the ladies room and back to my recliner and all of sudden I started to feel weird.

Now, if you’ve brought me to treatment, I have already prepared you for what to look for in a patient that has an allergic reaction to treatment. Six years ago, I could call em early. I would be talking to another patient and I would notice them shaking but they didn’t realize it. I would ask them if they felt ok, and they usually answered yes, but they were going into anaphylactic shock. I would call a nurse over and boom, every nurse and Physicians Assistant in the Cancer Center would swarm the patient and administer the necessary drugs to counteract the reaction. Very impressive.

I said to Dawn, “I’m just talking out loud for a minute, but the back of my tongue is tingling.” I had just sneezed twice so I was thinking it might have something to do with the after affect of a sneeze. She asked, “are you alright and should I tell someone?” I said, “wait a minute and lets see if it goes away.” Just then my eyes starting tingling and every part of my body was itchy. I said, “now we need to get someone quickly”. So Dawn jumped up, went around the corner and grabbed the first nurse she saw and within 5 seconds the swarm was on me. The chemo was shut off, needles and bottles of medicine were pulled out and all sorts of liquids were systematically injected into my IV. At the same time a nurse is placing a blood pressure cuff and pumping it up, another is checking my blood oxygen, and the Physicians Assistant is disrobing my sweatshirt to check all parts of my body for rashes and swelling. She was also checking my lungs and heart beat with the stethoscope. Yet another was hanging a bag of fluids. I felt very important and was a bit embarrassed that I had caused so much of a scene.

So given my personality, I said “I’m really ok, I’ll be fine. This will make a great story for my blog.” I’m smiling, they are looking very serious. I hate that look. Within 20 minutes I was stable and no longer itchy, but I was denied further treatment and sent home with a Benadryl and anti nausea cocktail to be administered per their instructions.

Now I am going to be skin tested for another platinum based drug called Cisplatin to see if this is something my body will tolerate. I will know this week because I get to do it all over again on Thursday afternoon. Then its off to Florida for 16 days! No treatments, only one blood test while I’m there just to make sure all is going well with white and red blood cell counts. Can’t wait.