The eagle eyed of you may have noticed I have renamed my current delightful chemo drug to give you some sort of a clue as to how my experience has been.
I have heard so many people say they found Paclitaxel easier than EC and I guess I was lured into a false sense of security. My world began to crash part way through Friday, less than 48 hours after the infusion. Initially just not feeling quite right, lovely husband said “we are not quite ahead of the curve here, are we”. Indeed. By early evening I had excruciating abdominal pain, probably the worst pain I have had in my life. The sort of pain where you can’t easy turn over in bed without major incident.
Somehow I got through the night. The next morning, I should really have contacted the onco helpline but instead decided it was probably the worst constipation I had had in my life and to treat it with Lactulose. Got some slight relief from that, but it was a weekend in bed and on the sofa. Thank goodness for the Commonwealth Games.
On Monday morning I did contact the helpline and wasn’t surprised they asked me to go in for assessment. My diagnosis of extreme constipation was probably correct but unfortunately my infection markers were also raised. The suspicion is a UTI but it’s hard to tell as my abdominal area is so painful anyway. The hospital leapt into panic mode over the infection as they don’t want me to crash into neutropenic sepsis, so put me on a variety of antibiotics via IV overnight. No one seems worried about or doing anything to help the initial problem, but I am still in a fair bit of pain.
i am hoping they will let me go home today with oral antibiotics and hoping I can get some more relief for the abdominal pain. I don’t yet know whether my next dose can go ahead tomorrow or how we avoid a repeat of the pain I am certainly not looking forward to the next 11 weeks
