Well, despite a long, 6 1/2 hour, day at the Galton Unit on Thursday, I'm delighted to report absolutely no side effects from the Herceptin. The helpful Macmillan and Breast Cancer Care leaflets told me the first two of these 18 doses would be by drip and, provided no adverse reaction, the remainder would be by subcutaneously into the thigh but in actual fact this first one was jabbed straight into the leg - I don't mind that at all, in fact I prefer it as it's over and done with quicker.
Well that was the interesting bit, thereafter we just had to sit around having temperature, and blood pressure etc monitored every 1/2 hour - and we weren't even allowed to leave the Unit for a walk about which got a little bit boring and uncomfortable 😴 Next time the monitoring is only for 2 hours and then after No.2, provided no problems, just a half hour wait each time.
My supply of daily anti coagulant syringes finishes on 24/December so we thought we'd better check if that was that finished with or whether I needed to continue. Lead Nurse checked with Onco and unfortunately confirmed that she had already written to my GP asking him to issue repeats up to the the middle of March - eeeek! 😱😱😱😱😱😱
Because I had to start the steroids on Thursday morning in preparation for the "nasty" Docetaxel (that's the banded name - generically Taxotare hence FEC-T) on Friday, they gave me a rather poor night's sleep with very restless legs so I wasn't on best form when we got to the hospital on Friday for our 11:00 and they were running late. Changing to this new drug was nearly as scary as starting with the first FEC back at the beginning of October - this now seems like a lifetime ago and FEC became my friend by only producing minor side effects for the first week or so. Obviously I'm choosing here to forget the complete hair loss and blood clots which are of course ongoing 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
But despite everyone being really, really busy, my nurse was as lovely as ever and even when the machines kept flashing up "air lock" an "occlusion" (which did cause Ian a few worries) she calmly explained it was something that Docetaxel was "bubbly" and therefore prone to causing bother and we shouldn't worry. In the end she just turned the monitoring machine off and let the solution drip through until an alarm on her phone went off - technology eh?
Then came the next bit of pin cushion news - because my bloods and platelets went so low last time, I now have to start the immune boosting jabs on Day 2 (today) for 7 days instead of Day 5 for 5 days. But because I'm already injecting daily in my stomach these ones will have to go into my thighs - but not really a problem as there's plenty of flesh around them.
We were all done by about 13:30 and as soon as I was home I went straight to bed for a nice 4 hour sleep.
Today (Saturday) I feel as right as rain, no nausea, headache or anything really - except a slight touch of the 💩💩💩 (makes a change from the usual FEC constipation).
So hopefully I'll have nothing much further to report in the coming week. We have a week's respite from hospital visits and not back til 24/December for Onco and Line Flush.
Feeling relieved 😌😌😌😌😌😌😌😌😌😌
