BCNU - Chemo

Here I am. Sitting in a hospital bed for my overnight hospital stay for this new chemo BCNU at Stanford. I'm in the main hospital building. Not the regular place, which is the Cancer Center. I had to be here at 4:30pm to start 4 hours of IV hydration before the nurses started the chemo. Eric & I got here, checked in, got my room and found I have a huge room all to myself. So, Eric is able to stay with me overnight. If I had a roommate he would have to go back to the hotel. 

Just got my room

After the usual checks of height, weight, blood pressure, temperature, and heart rate, my nurse came in and started to get me ready to be connected to the IV hydration through my catheter. I also ordered my dinner. Dinner tonight was cheese ravioli with marinara sauce and to add in a little protein, a side of black beans. I am restricted, as of checking into the hospital, on what I can eat. Meaning I am back on the low microbial diet, will have to wear the Darth Vader mask when I leave my room now and when I am discharged tomorrow, I will have that awesome hydration on wheels bag again. I will get rid of the bag on wheels after I get my stem cells on Monday and it will be replaced with a fanny pack one. Yep! I will be sporting a fanny pack. I think the last time I had one of those was in 6th grade. It's been that long. 

BCNU chemo has started

I had my dinner while getting my IV hydration. At about 9:30pm, my nurse started to give me some anti nausea medication through the IV. She also gave me my regular medication I take every day. at 10:30pm She came in to start the chemo. She already had the bag up on the stand and it was connected to my catheter, but it wasn't turned on and going through my system yet. She confirmed my name, medical record number and my date of birth and turned it on. Then, about 10 minutes into my chemo, she came back in introduced us to my new nurse because she was going home due to overstaffing. Lucky for her, but we were both getting acquainted to her. We really liked her. So far, my new nurse is nice and very helpful. 

My rock and me

About an hour into my 2 hours of this chemo, I started to get the jaw pain. So, I pressed the call button and she came in to give me some Fentanyl for the pain. I will tell you this, this is the first time ever that I have felt kind of "high". Maybe more euphoric. Basically, I started to feel good. Like, really good. And, my pain went away! Needless to say, it worked! Now, it's tough because I am exhausted. I can barely keep my eyes open. Then again, it is about 12:30am and I've been up since 7am. So, that's understandable. 

Well, there is a somewhat brief yet kind of long update for my 1st day of treatment.