Friday, January 14, 2011-Day 11

I wake up in the morning and the feverish flu like feeling from the night before is gone. The knot is gone but I've had bad diarrhea during the night. I have an early appt this day for my neulasta shot. Neulasta is a drug administered just below the skin to help reproduce white blood cells which are killed off during chemotherapy. This helps to fight off infection which often occur frequently with chemo patients since your immune system is severely weakened by the chemo. The unfortunate trade off is that Neulasta causes severe pain in the bones. This is atleast what I've been warned of ahead of time. So I get dressed and ready and my dad shows up and we head down to the care center again. We check in at oncology and they check my vitals again and after a minute they bring me into the transfusion room. I wait and after 10 minutes one of the nurses comes over and administers the shot in the back of my right arm. I head back out and get my father who has been waiting outside the transfusion area and we leave the care center. He takes me home and I get in bed and rest again. I dont feel anything immediately but I eat and take some pain pills just in case and lay down. Several hours later as I'm laying in bed I feel a growing pain in my chest and arms. Dr Tabarra had warned me that some patients think this is a heart attack, but it's just 1 of the effects of the Neulasta. So as the pain seizes my left arm, shoulder and chest I lay there and pant taking deep breaths trying to get through the pain. They havent given me a prescription telling me just to take tylenol or advil to help with pain both of which do nothing. The pain spreads to my back and I spend the night trying to find a comfortable way to lay which never comes. To make matters worse the chemo is giving me severe diarrhea which makes me have to get up every hour off the bed which becomes increasingly harder as the pain starts to grow worse. I try to eat but everything I eat makes me violently ill til I'm tired, dehydrated and delirious. That night I take some advil pm which help me to sleep just a few broken hours of pain. This new journey is not going to be easy.