First week of chemo complete.

Valerie finished her first week of chemo on Friday and things seemed to be going smoothly...until Friday night came. The last day of chemo hit her pretty hard. 

Her first day of treatment was actually last Thursday on April 25th. She got what seemed like a massive dose of Rituxan. This drug is specific to Non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

When she  was rediagnosed recently her doctor mentioned that the sample tissue that was used for the biopsy was very high in CD20. This is a protein that is expressed in all stages of B cell development and is found in B cell lymphomas. Basically CD20 helps Valerie's cancer grow and this should have been a major clue to the pathology lab in 2010 when Valerie was initially diagnosed with Hodgkin's. Rituxan's job is to inhibit CD20 and she should have been given Rituxan three years ago. Rituxan is not chemotherapy and has no significant side-effects. 

After the Rituxan came the chemo. She started on the new chemo regimen on Monday and was hooked up to the bags for almost 8 hours. This was probably the longest day she has ever had for chemo and it was really tiring. The next four days were not as long. She only needed to be there for four hours. That's 20 hours of poisons being infused into her bloodstream and I expected the worst. (I say poisons because nurses and pharmacists need to wear protective gear and goggles when handling chemo drugs.)

I thought that she was going to be laid out and suffering starting on Tuesday. She felt really sick but she was able to tolerate it well enough to take the kids to the dentist with me and to walk around the house and do things. I was really happy but then Friday night came. 

One of the reasons that Dr. Reeder started her on the R-ESHAP protocol was because it contains a drug called Cytarabine. He has always been concerned about the brain tumor that Val had last year and wanted to make sure that the CNS (Central Nervous System) was treated. Cytarabine is one of the few chemo drugs that breaks the blood-brain barrier and he feels that it would do the trick. Well, it did in a big scary way. 

Cytarabine was the only drug that Valerie was going to get on Friday and it gave her 2 big side-effects. She felt as though her brain was on fire. Imagine a burning sensation inside your head and nothing could provide relief. She had to suffer through that and thank God that it only lasted one night. The other side-effect was night terrors and nightmares. As Valerie was trying to go to sleep she kept on waking up in a panic. She felt as though there were evil spirits that were tormenting her as she tried to go to sleep. I am praying that the next cycle of chemo is going to be the last one before her stem cell transplant. It would really suck if she had to suffer in this way again.

Her regular symptoms did continue today. This morning she was suffering with one of the worst bouts of nausea that she has aver had. She couldn't even move an inch without feeling like her stomach was twisting into knots and that she was going to hack. The nausea was really bad all day but this morning especially and we are hoping and praying that over the next few days, she will feel less and less sick. 

This week and next week she goes in on Thursdays for more Rituxan and then the 2nd and hopefully last cycle of chemo starts the week after that. That's two full weeks of recovery.

So that's this week in a nutshell. Once again thank you so much for all the support. We are so close to hitting on online goal. Please continue to share this site with all of your friends, neighbors, co-workers and anyone else that you think will be touched but Val's story.