I went ahead with the chemo on Monday. The chemo went really well and there was no pain involved. To use the port a cath they just insert a needle into the port a cath (slight sting when it goes it but nothing compared to getting a drip put in) and then connect a line to it. I decided to take the anti nausea drug Zoffran up front and it worked brilliantly as I was not at all sick. Unfortunately none of the diahorrea drugs are suitable for pregnancy other than codeine which I don’t find to be very effective so that was still an issue for me. They were able to give me all of the chemo in 3 hours which was great. I had the chemo in the HOCA clinic as a day patient and then was admitted to the Mater Private for an overnight stay.
Mum stayed with me and we were both feeling good and the whole thing was quite uneventful until 10pm at night. Unfortunately my body went into some kind of shock and I had excruciating pain through my neck, back, shoulder and abdomen. The pain in my shoulder was around the port a cath and extended down my arm. I could not move at all without severe pain and also started uncontrollably shaking. The whole experience was awful. They gave me panadol and codeine initially without any effect. After calling my doctor they decided to give me a morphine injection which took forever to administer as it added to a pain threshold I was already not coping with and I kept yelling at them to stop. Eventually it took effect and I calmed down. I had tests this morning to check that the port a cath was in correctly and that there were no additional blood clots. All was clear there. They don’t know what caused the reaction as it was the same chemo drugs I have had before the only difference being they were administered a little faster. They don’t know if it was a reaction to the chemo drugs or something to do with the port a cath. We just have to wait and see if it happens again with the next round of chemo.
Given last night was so horrible I popped into Brenda’s office today for her to do a check on Arielle. All was well and she was happily kicking awya and her heart was beating strongly. Hopefully she was blissfully unaware of the dramas of last night.
So I am still in hospital overnight tonight for observations and then hopefully home tomorrow.
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