Chemo's Toll

Back in 2004 when I *enjoyed* my first chemo treatment, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I sailed through the whole ordeal without the smallest hint of nausea. I think the worst thing for me was a little bit of chemo-brain and the fact that food didn't quite taste the same, in fact, most things tasted like cardboard (yes, I've sampled some cardboard in my life).

This time around though I haven't been so lucky. My first treatment cycle went off without a hitch and I was back at work for the most part suffering on mild nausea. My second treatment though went terribly. We established pretty quickly that body has reached its limit with Carboplatin. I developed a reaction to the drug which caused me endless coughing to the point of being sick. The recourse at the time was a dose of Benedryl and an Epi shot followed by three hours of sleep. That was the easy part. For the next five days, I spent a lot of my time riding the porcelain bus emptying my guts out thanks to some unimaginably bad nausea. For the first time I got to taste what most people endure when they go through chemotherapy. After a week of not being able to keep even a sip of water down, I ended up in the ER getting rehydrated and brought back to normal. A couple of days of limiting myself to liquids, life began to return to normal. And all of this just to prep me for my next treatment next Tuesday. Damn, I hope I don't have to go through that again!