I was back at the clinic for my 17th Erbitux/Irinotecan treatment bright and early Wednesday morning. We anticipated some delays because of roadwork, so decided to leave a little early and take the long way round to avoid the construction. There wasn't as much traffic as we'd anticipated so we arrived at 7:45 AM for my 8 AM appointment.
I signed in, paid my co-pay and was almost immediately called back to the lab. I stepped on the scale and discovered that I have gained weight- and am now a whopping 90 pounds! My blood pressure and temperature were normal and the port was working for the blood draw- thank goodness! I was sent to an examining room to wait for the doctor, who came in after a few minutes. We discussed how I was feeling, talked about the woes of pollen season, she checked me over and we waited a few minutes for the results of the blood work to come in. They still hadn't come in after a few more minutes. She sent me over to the infusion room to wait since we can't start a treatment until she's sure my bloodwork is in order and my counts are high enough to proceed. I picked out a chair, got settled in and waited. And waited. The nurses apologized and told me they'd get me started as soon as the results came in. Finally word came that the machine had broken down and they had sent my blood upstairs to another lab in the building. More waiting. Finally one of the nurses said they had gotten the machine working but hadn't gotten the results back from the other lab so they were going to take more blood and test it. I finally got hooked up for the treatments at about ten minutes to ten. Needless to say it had been a long morning, but as I told the nurses, I really didn't have anything else planned. The treatment continued uneventfully and we were finally on our way home by 2:30 that afternoon.
As usual, after eating some lunch I slept most of the afternoon and have been lacking energy ever since. I've usually recovered pretty well by Saturday after my Wednesday treatments, but for some reason, maybe because of the cumulative effect of the treatments, maybe because of the extra blood that was drawn, I've been dragging after this treatment. I did cook some lovely flash roasted pesto salmon, saffron spinach risotto and a raspberry pudding cake on Friday, though, and we took the dogs to the groomer on Saturday and picked up some odds and ends of groceries, but for the most part I've played a lady of leisure for the last several days. I'm planning to make some baked chicken Milanese for supper tonight, then relax with an episode of Midsomer Murders on the Kindle Fire. I'm still trying to decide whether to go to yoga class tomorrow night or give myself another day off to regain my energy. Decisions, decisions.
1 comment:
Hope you feel up to yoga tonight but we understand if you can't make it. During the three years that Jilda did those infusion We never went there in a hurry. I wrote my column each week she was in the chair.
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