Unusual Day at the Cancer Center

Yesterday was definitely a very unique experience at the infusion center. We had been concerned about the things that normally concern people that are getting a new round of chemo with drugs they're not familiar with. How's my body going to handle the chemo?  Will this round of chemo work better than the last one? Will it hurt? We were very familiar with the the old routine and this would be a very different routine this time. Well, even if we were at are worrying best we couldn't have come up with yesterday’s scenario. We got into the infusion center at about 10:40. I like that place because it's quiet and very relaxing. The nurse gave us a very detailed explanation of what we should expect and what we should expect in the aftermath of the chemotherapy. She explained to us that this was not strictly chemotherapy but this was immunotherapy which is a much more targeted treatment. She thought that one of the things that we might experience in the first couple days is nausea and so I have lots of nausea pills. She told me “don't wait till you throw up! Take the pills whenever you feel funny.” The first round of chemo took about two to three hours each time we were there. This one will take about an hour to an hour and a half since there's only one chemical going in me. Most of that time is spent on loading the prep stuff into me. 

So most of the things we were concerned about didn't happen. My body seem to handle the chemo going in very well and it didn't hurt at all. In fact it was a very uneventful infusion. As they were disconnecting me from the iV’s Joyce went to get herself some tea and came back to her chair.  Next thing I knew she was sliding down in her chair and 5 nurses were instantly in action trying to catch her before she hit her head on the floor. They did a good job of letting her down very slowly but she did take a bit of a bump on the back of the head on the wheel of the IV cart. So instead of going home we got to ride in the ambulance to the emergency room at Marshall Hospital. They wanted to observe Joyce and make sure that there wasn't something else that was causing this. Fainting is something she had not done in a long time. So the end of all this was that she came home about 5 in the evening and she seems to be no worse for wear, although her blood pressure at one point got down into the forties. I'm pretty sure that's not good. Thank you for your prayers. You didn't really know what you were praying for but God did. Also a big thank you to the nurses and paramedics who did a great job handling the situation. Once we got to the hospital Missy took me back to my parents house and she stayed with Joyce for a while. Hopefully the next infusion will be a little less eventful.