A brief update on how it’s going.
No serious side-effects so far from the chemo. It’s been three days and I was informed by my consultant that I’d start to feel worse around now.
I’m a bit dizzy. Felt a bit cold earlier and checked my temperature, which was a tad low at 36.4. My abdomen is a bit tender. I’m finding it hard to get to sleep at night. Bit of a headache yesterday. I can cope with these things.
My main concern is my arm where I was given the chemo. I told the nurses multiple times at the hospital that it was stinging, but they were happy that there was no chemo escaping from the vein, the pressure in the drip was correct.
The injection site, back of my hand, and going up the top of my forearm are still stinging now. I called the 24hr team at the hospital for advice because I just wanted to know if this was normal or common. I can’t get a straight answer out of them though. They’re so conditioned to be alert to infections in chemo patients (due to lowered immune system) that that’s all they want to check and so they’ve asked me to go into hospital tomorrow for examination. I’ve told two nurses on the phone that there’s no hotness, redness, swelling etc., I just want to know if what I’m experiencing is common, but I’m struggling to find anything about it online either because all results just tend towards either infection or peripheral neuropathy and as far as I’m concerned it’s neither of those.
Ksee’s taking me in the morning for a 10:15 appointment. It quite a trek, to a bigger city with a lot of traffic and it feels like a bit of a waste of time. I expect they’ll just tell me it’s a reaction and that there’s no way of telling how long it will last. I just want to rule out serious or ongoing damage to the area. I heard the main nurse telling another patient that they can’t give chemo high up the arm because if any escapes from the vein, there’s a lot of sensitive tissues and it could lead to amputation. So I just want to rule out anything potentially serious.
