Cancer Fabulous Diaries: Three Days After Chemo

Chemo

Date: June 6

I’m feeling: Like I’m hanging on by a thread

I’m not going to lie. The last three days were rough—and when I say rough, I mean rough. From the time it began to feel rough, it was like watching an hourglass full of sugar counting down the time. The sugar never seems to fall fast enough, and as I write this I’m still overcome with occasional bursts of nausea. It’s been three days and it sucks.

I was crazy to feel excited for my first day of chemo. That feeling quickly disappeared when i was overcome with nausea a few hours after completing my chemotherapy. I checked in at 8:45 am on June 3 and was discharged at around 1 pm. Shortly after, I went to fill a prescription and was on my way to IKEA to pick up a table.

It was all downhill after that. I puked in the car. I had some soup at my sister’s house, I puked in the car. I puked before I got home, and I puked when I arrived home. When I wasn’t puking, I felt like puking. When I didn’t feel like puking, it was extremely hard to muster enough energy to move, because I didn’t have an energy. June 3, nicely put, was a very bad hangover.

The next day was rough as well. I spent most of the day dry heaving, then I had to drag myself to the Cross Cancer institute to learn how to inject myself with Neulasta, a drug to help increase my immunity. At the grocery store I filled my cart with creamsicles, ice-cream sandwiches, chocolate pudding and soup. Strong-tasting foods and solids were hard to think about, and strong wafts of flavourful food suddenly made my stomach cringe. The rest of the day I felt very, very ill and only managed to eat about eight crackers, a bit of apple juice and I can’t remember what else. I woke up on June 5 and thought, “oh great, I’m still nauseous.” I felt like a fish whose stomach had been gutted out. The nurse said it would take about 24 to 48 hours for the toxins to flush out of my system but it feels like they’re still in there. My sister in law, Ebby, made me some mushroom soup. I could hardly move, two days and I’ve had hardly anything to eat. I managed to keep down a chocolate pudding, a few crackers (enough to go with the anti-nausea medication even though it wasn’t working) and some soup. I went back to bed and slept some more.

Dad picked me up and I went to get the Blackberry that Rethink Breast Cancer and Telus had sent me! I was so excited. The brief glimpse of the blackberry distracted me for a few minutes from my nausea.

By 4 pm I was feeling better. The evening went well and I had never been more proud of myself for eating pizza. No joke. I managed to keep that down, along with two wings, strawberries and apple juice. Things were looking up.

But then I woke up today and again my stomach feels gutted, as if someone took a scoop and scooped out all my insides. My head is pounding and I slowly make my way to the kitchen for a popsicle. Yes, it’s been a rough, rough, rough three days, and I only hope it’ll get better. I’m going to ask the nurse to prescribe me a different anti-nausea medication or at least to start me on an anti-nausea drip before I am sent home. My head spins thinking about my next chemo. One down (well, not quite down yet)… five more to go. – Sylvia Soo


To read more from the Cancer Fabulous Diaries, click here.

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