So, since March 8th, I have moved to London, Ontario and have started treatment here. One major difference in my planned treatment is that the chemo regime is different and more aggressive that the usual palliative chemo that is often suggested. Also we are going to do local radiation treatment as well - to the liver and surrounding areas - to cover the spread to all the lymph nodes. The hope (and not sure how plausible this actually is) would be to shrink down the tumour(s) to the point where resection might become an option again.
My chemo treatment regime is a high dose of cisplatin once every 3 weeks along with a continuous drip of 5FU being fed through a (very itchy) PICC line in my right arm, also a dose of epirubicin once a week (because my bilirubin is still high >40) we can't go too high on the epirubicin - at least not in one shot, apparently.
So, last Tuesday I got my first chemo - which lasted 5 hours while everything dripped into me, and I walked out feeling not too bad, but by the middle of the night I was vomiting, and the next day I was a wreck. Taking drugs (I am on 8mg of Odansetron + 4mg of Dextramethason (a steroid) every 12 hours for nausea, and then Stemetil every 4 hours as required (it was) to stop the nausea and drugs to fight the pain and then the chemo itself, and still feeling wiped out and nauseous - ug, not fun. But, by friday it seemed like everything was basically over. At the moment I have a good appetite.
The major annoyance right now is that the capped off bile drain that is still sticking out of my right ribs seems to be rubbing internally or something, and causes me sharp pain if I use my ribs too much, i.e. if I breathe heavily, or laugh, or burp, or hiccup, or move... Starting Saturday night this pain was ramping up and I decided to try to deal with this pain by taking lots of my "breakthrough" painkiller PMS-Hydromorphone which resulted in little reduction of the pain, but a huge increase and resurgence in my nausea. So Sunday was an endurance test
of nausea again - it was miserable, frankly, and felt like I was waiting for each minute to pass. Today has been largely better - and I am in good spirits.
And tomorrow, the chemo starts again... although, tomorrow I won't be getting the high dose of cisplatin, so I hope the effects will be much less drastic this time.
