March 13, 2009 Ouch

This seemed to be the week that my treatments caught up with me. Just felt lousy all week. Still trying to regulate the flow of waste material through my body as it has seemed to make a 180 degree change by the end of the week. After surviving Monday, I don’t ever want to experience that again so I have become more than a bit paranoid. I have stopped taking my pain medication as it might be adding to the constipation problem. My back has gotten better, but having the ability to almost completely take care of the pain was nice. Guess I’ll just have to suck it up a bit.

I’ve completed two complete rounds of chemotherapy now which is nice. I might be as much as half way through which is comforting. Although this hasn’t been as bad as it could have been, I will feel a lot better then I’m off the stuff. I have to have my own bathroom because of the potential danger to my fellow housemates. Not exactly reassuring.

In my eight trips to get chemo I have become friends with the two ladies that do the administering. Sammi (sp?) and Jerri are both very nice and do everything that they can to make me comfortable. If you remember when I started all of this, we had to do a switch because Jerri was having difficulty getting the IV started. Since that time Sammi has become my designated “sticker.”

She has actually added a couple of shifts just so she could be there when I come in because she understands my queasiness about needles. She denies this, but I’m not sure I believe her.

After Sammi got it started on Friday, she needed to make a medicine run over at the hospital (which is just next door) so Jerri and I had a chance to chat for a while as I was the only one in the room. It seems that Jerri has just recently returned to working directly with patients. It wasn’t that long ago that one of her patients had passed away after a two year battle with cancer. She was a woman in her thirties what had just given birth shortly before she found out she had cancer.

She and Jerri had become close during their time together and Jerri took her loss rather hard. One of the problems with working in the medical profession is the potential of having to deal with death on a frequent basis. It really makes you appreciate what these people do and how much it can affect them in their own lives.

Jerri and Sammi deal with dozens of people like me everyday yet do it with a smile that belies each of our possible fates. Sammi is so careful when she sticks me and her little “ouch” she says softly each time she sticks an IV in me tells me that it might actually hurt her more than me. Jerri is always ready to give me a hug when I leave and makes sure I have something to drink at all times. It’s obvious that the two ladies love their life work as well as the people that they try to help save. It’s also very obvious to me just how special these two people are.