Not What I Signed Up For

On day 3 after our first chemo treatment, it’s pretty safe to say that things went down hill pretty darn quick.

I got to my parents house pretty early and my mom was in such excruciating pain. She was light headed and dizzy and could not sit-up. This was by far, the thing I feared most – walking into room and having my mom tell me she did not think she could do this.

Two things can happen at that point, you can either succumb to your own emotional turmoil of seeing someone you love in such pain and doubt, or you reach down deep and figure out how the hell you are going to get them through this and on to the next step.

I picked the latter because I was not ready to let my mom go down that path so soon into treatment and there might have been something we could have done to make this process more bearable for her. Now, some will think that mentality is selfish, but as I told my mom before we started chemo – I firmly believed we could get through this, but if there came a time when she looked at me and said “I can’t do this anymore”, then I would be accept that decision. The one thing I did not want was to see my mom suffer.

So as I sat on her bed playing twenty questions asking what hurt, how was she feeling, what bothered her most … trying to get enough information in the hopes our Dream Team could provide some relief – it became clear.

The main problem was dizziness, and she felt she could feel her heart pounding in her ears. When her oncologist was called and this information was revealed, they asked what her blood pressure was. We had no clue. We were not told to monitor it, but her oncologist told us to take her to her primary care physician ASAP.

Thankfully, my mom’s primary care physician is here in The Colony, We loaded her into the car and whisked her away. After her primary care physician had given her the once over, we found out that her blood pressure had dropped dangerously low – 60 over something I can not remember. We were told that we could take her home if we monitored her blood pressure, gave her plenty of Gatorade and elevated her feet above her head – DONE!

Over the nest few days, my mom started to feel much better and her blood pressure started to rise. It turns out that no one really thought about taking her off her high blood pressure medication before starting chemo. One of the major (possible) side affects of chemo drugs is they drop your blood pressure. So it was like she was taking a double dose of her blood pressure meds. Once we took her off of those – she tolerated the subsequent chemos a million times better!

Helpful Hint:

There is no way on earth you can predict each and everything that can happen when taking chemo. As much as you try to see things coming before they get to an elevated stage, you can’t predict everything. As hard as it is to sometimes do in moments of emotional distress, if you can take the time to ask questions and listen intently to the answers so they can be forwarded to the treating oncologist, there may be a way to offset that side affect so it does not reoccur. Of course if it is an emergency, call 911 and figure it out later, but fortunately for us because we were vigilant we had a little time to address the issue on our own.