Day 158 - The Red Pill

It's been almost three weeks since I posted? Chemo happened (mostly) and round two starts this week (Thursday). I say "mostly" because my chemo treatments involve three parts: chemo drug #1 via IV, immunotherapy via IV, and chemo drug #2 via pills that I take twice a day (three pills at a time) for the first two weeks of every three week cycle. I didn't start them this first time because there was an insurance hiccup and the pills came in late and so my oncologist said to hold on to taking them until we start batch 2 (this week).

"You take the blue pill...the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill...you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."

But the thing about these pills is that they come with a litany of possible side effects, to include rashes on my hands and feet, heat sensitivity (the other med has cold sensitivity, lol), the usual suspects of nausea and vomiting, stomach issues, high risk of auto immune issues and ease of being infected, slight (tiny) chance of cardiac arrest, headaches, head spinning,

your head may explode, your fingers will turn into hotdogs, and oh, you will transform into a werewolf during the full moon. There are a gazillion side effects and apparently the medicine is caustic to the skin, so I'm not supposed to touch a broken capsule, and can kill a dog if it eats one. No, I never planned on feeding the dogs my chemo pills. These pills scare the hell out of me, and I have to start taking them come Thursday. For the record, I have finally, after 50 years, successfully achieved the ability to swallow a medium-sized pill. Since these pills cannot be broken, crushed, or otherwise ingested any other way than swallowing them, I had to learn. Practiced with my Prilosec.

And speaking of insurance (see paragraph 1), we had finally hit the deductible amounts, etc., to the point where everything would be covered 100% and guess what happened? July 1st is the start of the "insurance year" and so everything gets wiped and starts over. Are you freaking kidding me!? That is beyond frustrating.

Let's see, what else? The amount of medications I have to take begins to mount, and the schedule becomes something akin to a finely tuned pocket watch. I have to create a kind of spreadsheet that sets medication time, eating time, and time for certain medications to take

Just take these, twice a day.

effect. Like there's the steroid to take before the chemo pill, but the steroid has to be taken with food, and it needs 45 minutes to take effect, so I have to schedule breakfast, then steroid, then chemo pills, especially since they're supposed to be taken at the same time every day. It becomes a job in and of itself to manage all of this!

This was probably a boring post, without anything really new to say. I think next time I'll have some more to share and maybe start leaving you with some other news and experiences and things going on in our lives besides all of the cancer stuff. What do you want to hear about? What would you like me to share/talk about? What interests you? Leave ideas and comments below. Talk to me!