Bone Marrow/First infusion of Chemo

Thursday afternoon Dr L performed the long over due Bone Marrow test to further stage the Hodgkins.

It only took about 20 minutes but IT SUCKED!

I thought the Kidney biopsy was unpleasant, Bone Marrow was plain awful. I'm still sore. I hope I will never have to go thru that again. Everything you've ever heard about bone marrow involving a fair amount of pain and discomfort is totally true.

But that had to be done before I finally started chemo. I got my first treatment today (Friday).

One down, Eleven to go.

I started with an anti-nausea drug with a steroid right into the IV followed by my assigned Chemo cocktail.

So far it hasn't been that bad. But it's only been 4.5 hours since I got the drugs today. Any side effects will probably surface by late this evening or early morning. Three of the four drugs I'm getting are rapid infusion. Nurses push them into the IV by syringe. The last drug, Dacarbazine takes the longest. And since I don't have a port-a-catheter yet they warned me that the Dacarbazine BURNS going in.

It burns a lot. The nurses advised that the drug won't burn going into the port. So I need to take care of that before my next treatment. (Note to self.)

I have to go back Saturday morning to get my shot of "Neulasta" which is a white blood cell booster to help protect me from chemo-related infection. Followed by a visit next week for blood work to check for my risk of infection.

And then back again for Chemo...
It's an endless circle now. But at least this is the beginning of the end for Hodgkin's.