cancer – day 201
It’s been a long morning.
With fatigue really kicking in, it’s getting harder and harder to get out of bed to get fixed up and over to radiation every morning. I’m still managing to make it in time, but every day I’m a little closer to being late. 🙂
A little while after my radiation this morning, I had my weekly appointment with the radiation oncologist. No new news, I’m getting burned and they told me another skin gel to get that’s supposed to help with the soreness I feel besides the burning. And I have a sore in my radiation area that itches like crazy, so I’m supposed to use cortizone on that.
Today after seeing the radiation oncologist I came to the infusion center for the blood draw they need every three weeks. They draw the blood through my chemo infusion port. But halfway through chemo the port started getting clotted up so that they couldn’t get blood from it. So then they inject this de-clotting agent called TPA and I sit and wait. Last time it took two hours and two TPA injections to clear, but after all that it worked. I don’t know how long it will take today, but it didn’t work right away today so they TPA’d it and now I’m just waiting for the TPA to work. I’ve been here about an hour already.
This is a really nice infusion center. It’s new, and each patient is in a little three-sided room with a curtain, a big cushy reclining chair, and a cable flat screen TV. I’m not in one of those rooms today though, because they’re all full. Instead they put me in an unoccupied office next to the chemo rooms. No big cushy reclining chair for me! I would definitely be napping right now instead of blogging on my blackberry if I were in a chemo room.
I get my port taken out in a minor surgery next week. There may be one more blood draw in December that will have to be done through my arm(yuck!), but I wanted to get the surgery done before completing radiation so that if there’s any difficulty using my arm it will have a chance to heal before I fly home for Christmas and have to haul luggage around. I originally thought I would have the port removed the week after radiation is done in December, but this way it will have more time to heal and I can leave earlier to go visit my parents. I also wanted to have the port removed during this calendar year so more of the cost will be covered by my health insurance.
Someone was telling me about a woman they know who has been diagnosed with breast cancer but she doesn’t have health insurance. I can’t imagine how horrible that would feel, to be told you have cancer when you don’t have health insurance. The costs are ridiculous. Like there’s not enough to worry about when you have cancer.
They just checked my port, and the TPA hasn’t worked yet. They’ll check again in half an hour, and TPA it again, probably. More waiting. Uff da. I am so ready for a nap.
Phew! 1:30 and I’m finally out of here!