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Chemotherapy Day

VM Chemo Rooms

Jenny has been dreading this day, after the awfulness of the last chemotherapy three weeks ago.  Who can blame her?

I roused Jenny at 8:50, for a 9:15 departure. Her appt at Short Stay, where she gets her blood drawn first thing, before the appointment with the doctor and before chemotherapy.  

I made Jenny her favorite cheesy eggs l, cleaned up afterward, loaded and ran the dishwasher.

We seem to have the routine down to a science at this point.  The only variable is the time of the three appointments, which are invariably variable.

We left at 9:15, and made the first appt at 9:40. on the nose, after checking in at the oncology front desk and getting necessary paperwork which contains your assigned Short Stay treatment room number on top.

Short Stay is interesting.  Unlike other places in the hospital, you don't check in with anyone. Instead, when walking into the clinic, you drop off paperwork and enter the treatment room, and wait for a nurse to arrive.

At each visit Jenny's port is accessed.  I don't know the exact process, because I don't generally watch.  Jenny is tough, and has stopped preparing the srea fhe port is in with lidocaine, and declines it when offered.  Today there were three draws done, after the port was accessed, including one for her cancer antigen marker, which generally is meant to measure the cancer growth or the effectiveness of chemotherapy.

Jenny's dread was palpable. The nausea she has experienced would make any reasonable person feel the same way.  But, while she occasionally says she hates this, or wishes she didn't have this, she is brave.  Very brave.  

We had an hour to kill before meeting with Picozzi, so we went to the secret coffee location and then went and sat outside Ophthalmology, to avoid sitting and waiting in the cancer waiting area, which Jenny understandably hates.  I should note that Jenny is the youngest patient we usually see at chemotherapy.

We got up and wandered around the gift shop until Jenny said at around 10:24 that we should go up to oncology because she is often called early.  So, we go up to wait for the 1040 appt with Dr. P, and Jenny is called before we can get comfortable in our seats and are escorted to another exam room.

Dr. Picozzi came soon thereafter. He didn't recognize me, which is nothing new.  "Oh, you brought a new friend with you," he says.  Mind you, he is the premier oncologist dealing with pdac in the western hemisphere--he told us that--so he spends little time with us, and can be forgiven for not recognizing me.  Somehow, we started talking about NYU Law and he started talking about Dean Sexton, and his book comparing baseball to religion.  Jenny's exam was perfunctory, which is nothing new.  And then, as quickly as he came he was gone.

We waited in the exam room after Dr. P left for what  seemed like eternity.  Our next appt was at 11:30. I began to get concerned and asked Jenny if she thought they had forgotten us. She said that often she will hear them calling her from the waiting area--they really need to fix this--while she is waiting in the exam room.  On cue, "Jennifer" echoes from the waiting room, we make ourselves known, and are led Chemotherapy Room 21.

Jenny climbed into the battered chemotherapy chair 💺 like an old hand, resolute and resigned.  The vinyl chair, is baby shit brown and has a massage function that hasn't worked probably since the internet got popular. On the left side of the chair a tray protrudes, triangular in shape with rounded edges.

The room itself is tiny.  I am sitting in a chair blocked in by the computer stand to my right, the wall to my left, the foot rest of the chemo chair in front of me, and a recessed wall behind me.  Glad I'm not tall.  The good thing about the room, about all the chemo rooms is that they have big windows.  Each is probably 9 feet tall and 3.5 feet across. Now, the view is of the VM parking garage, and if it isn't sunny its cold as Alaska (it doesn't help that the heating unit blows cold air).  It beats no windows and there is a lot and a lot of light.

Jenny has alternating regimens every eight weeks.  Gemcitabine- Abraxane once a week, 3x, and then a week off.  This regimen lasts 8 weeks and then she switches to 5FU Folfiri. Every other week, for 8 weeks she gets an infusion at VM and then wears a pump for 48 hours.  Both are hellish for different reasons. The treatment plan, in total is 48 weeks, which means that Jenny should be done by late June or early July.

Today's chemo was without incident. We think it is because Jenny took olanzapine, an anti-nausea drug, before rather than after the drug.

Jenny, despite all her changes that I have discovered, still has parts of her that haven't changed.  I experienced that today when, as we were leaving the receptionist told Jenny her friend Kathy was here getting chemo in Room 26.  Same cancer, btw.  Jenny tells me she is going to see her and assures me, "it'll be quick."  20 minutes later, rather than letting my annoyance get the better of me, I relished in some sense she is fundamentally unchanged.