It’s Leap Day, and while I wouldn’t say I’m jumping for joy, today’s events will be a springboard for the next phase of this journey. My treatments to kill the cancer cells began today, and, as one of the many people attending to me today said, “it is kind of anticlimactic, isn’t it.”
I was gone 6 1/2 hours, and in that time, I drove for 1 ½ hours and we waited in waiting rooms for 3 ½ hours. That leaves 1 hour for anything that involved a nurse or a needle, which involved taking blood for testing and giving me 2 shots and 1 tiny IV bag of medicine,. It was easier than my weekly infusions (the ones I’ve been getting for a year for my primary immunodeficiency). The toughest part was that the IV was particularly pinchy and I didn’t get to do the activities I had brought to keep myself occupied. (I know…Poor me. Next time I’ll get things done in my left arm).
If that’s the toughest part, I got off so easy! It was nothing hard or scary and not at all like you see in the movies or imagine (ie. hours hooked up to bags of medicine). My only side effect so far is body aches and skin sensitivity. But, I don’t have the pills called Revlimid yet. Insurance and the specialty pharmacy haven’t lined up yet. So I have yet to see what they’ll do to me. Hopefully they will come soon. I do this every week, except no IV in the future, and maybe less waiting. All in all, pretty easy compared to what I had braced myself for.