I mentioned yesterday that this round of chemo has been nothing compared to the first one that we experienced. I’ve had energy and didn’t spend the first two days just sleeping like I did before. I don’t know what the difference has been, but we have a few theories.

Before my first round of chemo I was really sick. My cancer symptoms (cough, fever, fatigue, etc.) were pretty acute and so I was in tough shape both going in and coming out of chemo. So it’s pretty understandable that it was such a rough transition. The other thing that may be contributing to my better health this week is the extra “bonus” third week of recovery that I had due to my low white blood cell count which delayed my next chemo session by one week.

Working theories also include the fact that I was sucking on ice chips during the chemo treatment, the fact that I ate a special smoothie with mouth sore preventing amazing things in it, and/or the manuka honey spoonfulls I ate every few hours in the days after chemo. The mouth sores have definitely been much better after this chemo session than last. (Thanks everyone for their suggestions of these remedies)

Because my white blood cell count was so slow to recover after my initial treatment, my doctor has put me on a new prescription. As Christine mentioned in a previous post, the new medicine comes in the form of an injection that I have to receive daily for the first 5 days after chemo. It’s a sub-cutaneous injection which means that it needs to go in under the skin but not into veins or muscles. That leaves fat, of which I don’t have much. Or at least I don’t have much of it in places that I can reach myself. So it’s Nurse Stine to the rescue!

The pharmacist gave us a quick overview of our supplies (the viles, the syringes, the antiseptic wipes, and the “sharps box” for used needles) but she recommended that we head over to Injections to see if they could give us some further teaching, and indeed they could. One brave technician even let Stine inject her with a saline solution while she talked her through it the first time. I couldn’t believe it!

That just happened.

After injecting saline into a complete stranger (with permission), Stine injected me my with first dose.

I was very brave, so I got stickers afterward:

Superman Stickers

It’s been a few days now of receiving daily injections from Nurse Stine, and I must say that she is doing an amazing job. It’s not something I would want to do have to do to her everyday.

The side effect of these injections? Sore bones. It’s kind of hard to describe what this feels like, but it’s almost like my bones are brittle. There is general discomfort, but when I touch myself anywhere or brush up against something it feels like I have a deep bruise. It’s weird. This side effect is combined with the general muscle pain and soreness from the chemo treatment, so I see lots of Tylenol and many a warm bath in my future this week. Christine has used this an opportunity to reinstate her never-ending campaign for a hot tub.