Chemo

Okay, picking up where I left off... Lewis was getting his chemotherapy treatments. I was never sure about how people receive chemo. The first thing they do is draw your blood. This is to check your complete blood count levels. On shows when they say get a CBC that's what they are talking about. When they drew his blood, they would put the IV line in his arm and leave it there. Then the results come in. The patient goes into the doctors office and they go over the results and decide if anything should change. The patient then goes into the infusion room. The nurse hooks them up to a saline solution. I know in Lew's case he had to have a whole bag go into his body and then they could start the chemo drug. When that was done he had to soak up another one. Sometimes this was really frustrating if the nurse put it on a slow drip because it could take about two hours for one bag.

Like I had mentioned in the last post, Lew's regimen of drugs was Stanford Five. The five drugs were Nitrogen Mustard, Bleomyacin, VP 16, Vinblastine, Vinchristine. The nitrogen mustard was really scary. The normal drugs are just put in the bag and they let it drip in. With nitrogen mustard it would eat the plastic, so they have to administer it in glass. And the nurse has to push it in his vein, slowly, at a specific rate. If the glass with the drugs in it breaks, they have to evacuate the hospital. Nitrogen Mustard was used during the holocaust as chemical warfare to kill people, and they were injecting it into Lewis's arm.
Bleomyacin was given the next week. That drug can do serious damage to your lungs. The next drug was given the following week. It was the VP 16. This one has to be given in two doses. He would get the first one on Friday and then he had to come back on Saturday. They left the IV in his arm, so they did not have to poke him again the next day. This was really uncomfortable for him to sleep, so we didn't do that again. A lot of patients have a port put in. That is where a device is put in their chest and it leads straight to their heart. The IV is then connected to the port. Then they don't have to have a new IV put in for every treatment they receive.
The two other drugs are vinblastine and vinchristine. They are emuslifyers. They help the other three drugs work better. They would be alternating for each treatment. The interesting thing is that they are made from the plant vinca major, or vinca minor. It's a pretty looking vine plant with purple flowers. Lew's dad taught me that.
Now, besides feeling nauseous there are a lot of side effects to all the drugs. Lewis had to take a slew of pills. I can't even remember all of them. He had one of the little boxes that had drugs in it, to take at specific times of the day. After his first chemo we drove to Idaho. Lewis's parents wanted him to be home so they could help take care of him. I remember stopping a few times along the way so Lewis could barf or use the bathroom.
Chemo makes the patients really sensitive to smells also. Lewis would have to hold a wash rag over his nose and mouth so smells would not make him throw up. The lotion I would wear, Victoria Secret - Pear, makes him sick still to this day. He is still sensitive to smells.
Not all chemo drugs make you lose your hair. Lewis was unlucky and had to go through that part. Since we had just gotten engaged, we were wanting to have our engagement pictures taken while Lewis still had hair. We were not getting married until August, but we had our picture taken in March. It had snowed the night before, so we thought that was funny to send invites in July with snow in the background. Here is the picture...

When Lewis started to loose his hair he shaved it off. He did leave it in a Mohawk for a few days. The nurses really liked that. It was weird how the hair fell out. In his armpits the hair is so fine that when I would pull it out, it looked like the fuzzy part on artichoke hearts.

Many cancer patients skin starts to turn yellow. The bleomyacin starts to kill your nerve endings. For Lewis it would make it hard for him to walk. At the end of the 13 weeks he could not write his name. His hands could not write. If he bumped his head then it would shock him all the way down his body to his toes. Have you heard about trees? If you cut them and look at the trunk, you can count the circles to see how old the tree is. Well, for every chemo treatment Lewis received, a red line would go across his fingernails. On the last picture you can sort of see that.

After a few weeks of chemo Lewis was getting weaker and weaker. One of his blood tests came back that his counts were too low. He had to wait a week to get chemo. The next week things were looking better, but not good enough. He had to start getting a shot three times a week to keep his blood count up. This shot was called Nuprigen, and Lewis and I would give him the shot in his stomach. Every shot cost $300.

For the first treatment of VP16 on Saturday, I had a bridal shower. It wasn't any shower. It was Cassi's. Lewis and I had asked one of his friends to come sit with him during chemo, so that I could go to the shower. It was out in Tooele, so it would take me a while. I hated leaving him, but I didn't want to miss these important things with Cassi. Well, the friend forgot about Lewis. I drove Lewis to the U, and still no friend. Lewis told me to go and then come and get him. I left the hospital and cried the whole way home. As soon as I got home, I told my mom I had to go back up to the U. I knew Cassi would understand. I drove back up and cried the whole way. Lewis and I were with each other every day, all day. I went to class and he would be at my apartment. He could not work full days at his job. He had moved in at my house in Magna. That way my mom, Cassi and I could take care of him. I had to keep a close eye on him because if he got a fever above 100, we had to rush him to the emergency room. I hated being away from him. It would make me panic. On the way back up there, I turned the corner and saw a hearse. Ya know, the cars that transport the body from the funeral to the cemetery. Seeing this just made my heart hurt. I had decided that if he died, I was going to ride in the back with him. There was no way I could let him back there with out me. He was not going alone. I could not be seperated from him. That was so hard. I was crying even harder now. When I walked into the infusion room, crying, the nurse just smiled and said, "I wondered when you would get here?" The nice part about Lewis and I, is that we both cry. He saw me cry and started to cry. He hates this about himself. I love it. Sometimes the faucets turn on, and you can't get them to stop.

We had really good nurses. There was Shelly, Paula and Karen. Karen was new. Paula had red hair and was sassy. One day some of the young candy striper girls were discussing skirts. Paula commented to us that there were more important things to worry about than clothes. She knew that our minds had bigger things to worry about at that moment. I was just jealous that that was their problems and not ours. It was difficult at times relating to people about things. When people our age was concerned about where to go out that weekend. We were worried that Lewis had not had a bowel movement that day. Shelley was awesome. On the day of Lewis's last chemo she bought him balloons.

As I had mentioned earlier, we went to Idaho a few times after Lewis had chemo. It gave us a lot of time to talk things out. We were planning on getting married in the temple in August. I remember having a conversation with Lewis about getting sealed to each other. We had both decided that if he got so sick that death was close, we would hurry and get sealed. I loved having that knowledge and reassurance that I could be with him always.

Looking back on that time, it was not all doom and gloom. We were planning our wedding! It seems like a crappy time for him to be sick. But really, we were so infatuated with each other that it helped fight the depression that comes along with serious diseases. We were probably lucky that it happened at that time.

Cassi was also planning her wedding. The picture below is of her wedding day. Lewis and Cassi were matching. Check out his blue, suede shoes!

On June 11, (after the CT scans and another fast with barium sulfate) Lewis was declared cancer free!! Wahoo!

Too bad that only lasted about two weeks. Part 4 of this novel will be tomorrow...