sky's Cancer Blog

November 28, 2007

Alas! Vacation Is Finally Over

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My three week vacation from Aredia and the chemo treatments is over. Today I had a visit with the onocologist. She was, as usual, happy with my lab results. My only complaint was lack of sleep.

I had been on Ambien CR for the past six months and I haven’t liked the side effects I’ve been experiencing, mood swings, overeating, depression. Until this week, I weaned myself off of it for the past three weeks. It was rough. My sleep pattern was all screwed up. I couldn’t sleep until 4 or 5am at night, and then I was taking 2-3 hour naps to compensate.

Nothing seemed to work…counting sheep, drinking warm milk, melatonin. I was almost desperate to try standing on my head and see if that worked.

So, my doctor told me to stop taking Ambien and she prescribed Restoril instead. Tonight, I took two capsules. Beside the light-headedness, I’m still not sleepy. I may have to talk to my doctor about this.

If ya’ll have any suggestions, comments, etc., about this, please feel free to chime in. I know as cancer patients, we all suffer from insomnia at one point or another so I would appreciate any input you have to offer.

After the visit with the doctor, I went in to the treatment room to get prepped for the Aredia. To my surprise, the nurse showed up with a bag of Zometa.

I don’t know if I ever mentioned this in any of my previous blog entries, but I was given Zometa last year, right before I checked out of the hospital.

That night, I had such a violent reaction to it, I was sure I was dying. I developed severe chills, was drifting in and out of consciousness, developed a fever that quickly shot up to 104 and climbing, and was sweating so bad my sisters were having to change my bedsheets every four hours because they were soaked through. My appetite was gone. I could only eat a few spoonfuls of soup.

My sisters and best friend took me in to see the general surgeon. He prescribed a powerful antibiotic and ordered chest x-rays to be sure the reaction wasn’t from the back surgery.

I began to feel better after taking the antibiotic, but it took me two weeks to feel normal again. Since then, my oncologist switch me to Aredia, accompanied with five pre-meds (Decadron, Zantac, Heparin, Benadryl, Tylenol). My body has been able to tolerate the treatments since then.

Anyway, I told the nurse I always get the Aredia along with five pre-meds. She checked my charts and talked to the doctor, and had my orders changed. She had a very relieved look on her face when she came back to my bed, armed with all the usual bags of IV. She said, “I’m so glad you said something.” I replied, “Me too.” That was a close call.

So that was my adventure for today.

Posted on November 28, 2007 at 10:46:12 PM by Grace ( Alas! Vacation Is Finally Over, 1 comment)

Wow! What terrible side effects! It is always good to check the meds before they start the i.v. There are so many places your order can go wrong, doctor, pharmacy, nurse….I am glad you checked it out.

Melissa

Posted on November 30, 2007 at 3:08:06 PM by melsamei