As I recuperate from the chemo I had and find my way toward a natural healing, I am reminded of why I stopped doing chemo. This week my father-in-law was admitted in to the hospital. He has an irregular heartbeat and he needs to get it stopped and restarted. His doctor thinks the chemo he had 3 years ago probably caused heart damage. I hope and believe he will be ok, but this makes me so sad. Damage from chemo is one of the major reasons I decided to stop. I have had so much more then he has and it is scary.
When I first had chemo I didn't know there was an option not to do it. I certainly was scared and would have probably done the chemo anyway back then, but I wish I knew I had options. When the cancer came back, I begged my gyno oncol to let me try diet and supplements. He agreed to 2 months, but the fluid in my abdomen was making me soooooo sick. i was tired... exhausted really. I was weak and my heart was racing and my blood pressure was high. My muscles were weak. I could barely make it up the stairs. When i got home I plopped on the couch and sat there... forever ... trying to gather my energy. The fluid came fast... I had to get a paracentisis after just 6 days just before I started the chemo. I have no idea how many I had all along. 10 maybe? Can you imagine getting a 8 inch needle stuck into you and having fluid drained out... i had as much as 4.4 liters drained in one session. It was not fun. It wasn't the worst thing in the world, but still not fun. Anyway the fluid was coming to fast to stick to my guns and let juicing and raw foods get me healthy. I relented.
When my veins were shot and the nurses kept asking me to get a port, I said no. When they kept right on pushing I wanted to say... screw this chemo shit, I am done... but I kept going. When the six months of taxol was done, I was ready for them to say it was gone, but I was still getting fluid and I knew it was not. They said they wanted to add carboplatin and I wanted to just stop, but I said lets get this over with. Then I developed a hernia and got super sick from a intestinal blockage(from the hernia). I was puking brownish green stuff.... bile, and they admitted me to the hospital. I ended up getting emergency surgery when I spiked a fever because my intestine gangrened. So that gave me a bout 3 or 4 weeks off of chemo. I restarted and the nurses asked again if I would get a port... NO... Then one week I had an allergic reaction to the carbo. At his point I am thinking that's it. No more chemo.
This is where the I feel it was obvious I should stop. I had the allergic reaction and my doctor wanted to re challenge me the next week. I was so nervous. I was told a long time ago if you have an allergic reaction to medication.. or anything really... the next time could be much worse. Worse? yikes! When I went back in, a different doctor was covering, and he wouldn't give me the chemo. He said it was too dangerous. So he ordered a PET scan and said come back in 2 weeks. Well I decided then I would start a vegetarian diet and start juicing. I went back and the PET scan showed I still had activity so my doctor wanted to start me on something else, but he wanted to confer with my gyno oncologist. He called him and he was out of town. Ok so no chemo that week. I went in the next week assuming no chemo that week , because the nurse hadn't gotten the ok for the new drugs, and I was right my gyno oncol never called back... so unprofessional. So... no chemo that week. The doc calls the G O again and he is in surgery and he talks to an associate. They decide to give me cisplatin. I don't want cisplatin. I go in and talk to my friend Lisa and the man next to me has a stroke or aneurysm and 20 minutes later, they take him away but he has no pulse and not breathing. Yeah I didn't want chemo anymore. I just needed to get away from that place.I think it was pretty obvious the universe was warning me away from there. So by now it's been 5 weeks or so. I feel pretty good, my hair is growing back and I want to stop. I need a break mentally.
I go in the next week, and I have decided I am not getting this new chemo drug, so i don't take the steroids the night before. I am sooooooo nervous about telling the doctor this. He does his exam and says let's get started, and I say " I don't want to do the chemo." I don't even like remembering this It was awful. He gave me a 20 minute talking to about why I had to do it and alternative therapies are "bunk"... his word. He tells me his goal for people like me is to keep us alive with the best possible quality of life until a new drug comes along. Yuck I don't like this at all! Then he says to me... "This, right now, is the best you will ever feel." Yuck, I don't like this... and I think "you suck"... I DO NOT agree with that. I promise him I will come back in 2 weeks... just to get the hell out of there. As i am walking out the nurse stops me and asked me to get a port. I said NO, and walked away. She says after me, just think about it. PSHT... how about no.
The stress of telling the doctors what I wanted, of trying to find a new way, to find the courage to make it my final decision was unbearable, and I wrote about it in my earlier posts. When I walked out of the doctors office yesterday, I was ECSTATIC, ELATED, RELIEVED. I finally found the doctor for me. I wish I went to him from the beginning. When I had the allergic reaction, my ca 125 was 37, when I went back and told the doctor I wasn't doing chemo, he did the test again, it was 19.1 ...... YAY for me.
I love my new hematology oncologist, and I am going to blog that in the next post.
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