Treatment 3

Well I’m officially switched over to intravenous treatment. I went in for a treatment yesterday and it went pretty smoothly.

After they got me all checked in and checked my blood counts (which were all normal), they hooked me up to a saliene IV first. Then they followed that up with some kind of anti-nausea drug (I didn’t get the name). After that bag was emptied, they hooked me up to 1500mg of cytoxan.

The whole thing took around 4 hours (including an extra 1/2 hour waiting in the waiting room!). Luckily, I got a “semi-private” room away from the main room which had a television on. Daytime TV is mind-numbing!!! I was prepared with a few books to read, and was able to finish my lastest read Addicted to Mediocrity by Franky Schaeffer.

They gave be a prescription for Deltasone (50 mg twice a day for 5 days after the cytoxan), which I believe is some kind of steroid (Mom, or any of the nurses in the family want to correct me here?). The paper I got from the pharmacy indicates that it is used in many ways, among which are to control allergic reactions. I never took it when I was on the oral form of cytoxan.

[update on 10/2/02] I should have updated this page some time ago. Both my mother and my cousin Kimberly Neuhouser responded letting me know that I was right about it being a kind of steriod. This particular one is used mainly with other anti-nausea drugs and is mostly used in conjunction with chemotherapy.

I took a Zofran this morning with breakfast and haven’t really had too much in the way of nausea so far (a little earlier in the mid-morning, but it passed). I’ve been getting a lot of sleep over the past two days, so that’s probably helping as well.

My work has been very supportive. I’ve been using my VPN connection to login and do some work. I am also able to correspond via email to problems that arise.

Let me say thanks again for all who have been praying for me.