So, if Sherri is the Negasonic Teenage Warhead (strong resemblance) and I am Deadpool (strange resemblance), I know what my role here is: lewd humor and racy double-entendre.
Okay...I know. This is a family show, so I'll be good.
(looking straight into the camera) I promise.
I just better not run into that big metal guy with his goody-two-shoes platitudes. Although, he may have come in handy in the ER the other night...but that's getting ahead of the story.
The weeks since the first infusion were uneventful...that is, if you ignore her dehydration on day 5 that required IV fluids, and the fairly constant gastrointestinal problems she had throughout the cycle. And the skin rash and breakout, but that was minor (easy for me to say...). And the mild nausea and general fatigue. And the tinglings of chemo-induced peripheral neuropathy (compression gloves and
socks during infusion are supposed to help with that, she used them on
chemo round 2).
But it went as predicted: a couple of good days following infusion, then the poison starts to take its toll, symptoms worsen around day 4 through about day 7, then by day 10 it's not so bad. Except for the gut troubles. And the nausea. And the fatigue. Did I mention brain fog? At least she didn't experience any vomiting, which we were probably over-prepared for.
All in all we learned a lot, and that includes Merissa, who did a fantastic job of taking care of her mom that first week, in a badass paramedic/firefighter/drill sergeant/loving-and-concerned-daughter sort of way. With me at work, it was much relief to know she was there and Sherri would be well cared for.
Sherri's parents arrived for a visit the Wednesday before her second chemo treatment, which was on Friday 7/28. She was glad they came. During their nine days with us, her mom helped out by doing, among other things, 753 loads of laundry. She also baked 157 cookies, a quiche, a chicken pot pie, and a peach pie. And, she washed a lot of dishes and vacuumed the entire house. (Okay, 753 and 157 is probably an exaggeration. The rest is unembellished.)
Chemo day went well...except that Sherri had an allergic reaction to one of the drugs. It was mild with the first infusion and stronger with this one. It's really only a little bit unnerving when the nurses bring the crash-cart bedside before they start administering the offending drug. (Not really. It's a lot unnerving.) Now that we're sure the allergy is a thing, next time they'll add some things to the pre-meds BEFORE they give it to her, in hopes of mitigating the reaction.
Becca left her home on the Oregon Coast to come take care of her mom on the Tuesday following chemo, which was nice because Wednesday was our 26th wedding anniversary. Work was slow, so I took the day off...and had a great time with DeVon and Dianne at Mt St Helens. It was fun playing tour guide, including taking them for a 3 mile hike near the Coldwater visitor center on an interesting trail I'd never walked before. We came home to a great dinner Becca prepared while we were away, and that was very nice, too. So was the marionberry pie Sherri made for our anniversary.
But Sherri and I still think this has been the weirdest anniversary we've ever had. We're going to have to make up for it next year. Maybe the next 10 years.
DeVon helped a lot with the everyday stuff during the visit, and watched baseball with Sherri every day. But where his presence and experience really came in handy was about 10PM on Thursday night, when Sherri started having a new symptom: pulsating pain in her lower back that seemed to radiate out to her abdomen. The pain was so intense that she could not lay down, and she came out to the family room to request a consult with Doc Hale. He performed a bit of an exam, which ruled out some things but left a lot of unknowns. He recommended she get ahold of the on-call doctor on her medical team, which she did.
That doctor told Sherri that it was probably a side-effect from the chemo, and it could either be an uncommon side effect that is uncomfortable but not serious, or a rare side effect with possible life threatening consequences, and the only way to determine which it was was a trip to the ER for medical testing. (Cue the big metal guy mentioned earlier...)
We got to the hospital just before midnight, did an intake, sat in the waiting area. That's where the first appearance of the security staff occurred, when a very drunk and very loud woman, who had been brought to the ER by ambulance, because she called 911 to be taken to the hospital by ambulance, got very angry about having been brought to the hospital by ambulance when there was clearly nothing wrong with her, nevermind the stroke symptoms she told the paramedics about. The security guys calmed her down, took her to the back corner of the waiting area and sat with her, and that's where she started vomiting. Good times.
We were soon called into a different room because the triage nurse had decided that, since Sherri was showing signs of dehydration again and already had a hospital order to receive a fluid infusion if needed on Friday, they'd just go ahead and do it then. The RN went over the procedure to access an IV port with the nurse intern and the nursing student also present. Sherri sat patiently through the nursing student's questioning, and didn't show any anxiety when the RN had to help the intern access Sherri's port to administer the IV. I even heard her tell them that she grew up around teaching hospitals. I wish I could say I wasn't nervous about it.
Back to the waiting room until we get called for the CT scan the on-call doc recommended. Just as I was about to relocate us in the waiting room, because I'd noticed that the girl about 10 feet from us who was sitting on the floor and leaning against the chairs next to her was quietly vomiting into an emesis bag, we got called back into the nursing area to sit in a hallway there to wait for the CT scan. More good times.
After the scan we got set up in a private room because they were concerned about a cancer patient being exposed to the general population of the waiting area, and there we waited for all the testing to come back. For hours.
In the middle of one of the nurses checking in on us, there was a disturbance just outside our room, by another angry person, probably drunk, who'd arrived by ambulance and was trying to sneak out the back door. We could hear one of the nurses insisting that he take his hands off her employee.
That's when I noticed that one of the security guards on duty that night might as well have been the big metal guy, because he was about as wide as the door he had to duck to walk through. The nurse told the drunk, "The boys are here now, are you going to cooperate with us, or are they going to have to manhandle you?" He chose cooperation.
And that's when I came to the conclusion that it takes a special kind of medical professional to work overnight in an ER.
Sherri's tests came back (finally) and revealed none of the rare and potentially life-threatening side effects, just the annoying and painful uncommon ones. They treated her with a pain reliever. We went home about 7AM, with a prescription for more pain medication and a plan to treat the new symptoms as they appear.
So after a lot of sleeping this weekend, we've passed the 4-10 day low point after chemo. Sherri says brain fog is real, and there's other unpleasant side effects: like almost everything tastes like aluminum; there's a lot of general fatigue; and the skin rash and mouth sores are back. The chemo has taken almost all of her hair, even the cool mohawk. But she's feeling a little better every day.
She even made me a big pan of brownies. She said it was for our anniversary, too. (Hey, the pie is gone already.) And we deserve a double anniversary.
~Rick
Us, 8/2/2022, near our favorite place.
p.s. Shout out to JR, Nichole, Heather, Aly, and my siblings--Debbie, Brad, Amy, Scott, and Lori--for all their various forms of support, near or far, all of it full of love.
p.p.s. Also know that I get great joy from each of your cards, notes, postcards, and messages! Our Christmas-card pantry door is filled with a rotating display from you guys. Thank you so much 💖 (Keep 'em coming!!)
Love to each of you,
Sherri
