Darrel went in for chemo on Tuesday. He has the blood draw first through the port, then a wait for 45 minutes to see doctor. They prefer drawing the blood and waiting for the tests to assure the proper tests are done, so we have to go in early (8:15 AM) and doctor appointment isn’t until 9:00. It also means early morning traffic!

The doctor was pleased that Darrel is handling the chemo so well. His lab tests were all good, too. There wasn’t an order in for the tumor marker test, CA 19-9, so the doctor put that in to see if the chemo seems to be working. He had to have another blood draw for that test. We are still awaiting those results and I will post when we get them.

Went for the infusion and the first medication (irinotecan) came fairly quickly. It takes an hour and a half to infuse, so we always have reading materials and I have my iPad so did a little shopping on Amazon for our boat trip.

The 5FU medication is the one that goes into a pump and infuses over 46 hours. That always seems to take longer for some reason (I will have to ask my pharmacy contacts!) It was another 45 minutes after the first one was done before we got it and were able to go home.

Darrel continues to do well on this chemo. He had some nausea on Tuesday night but smoked a little pot and it went away. He also takes dexamethasone, a steroid, and ondansetron, anti-nausea, for the two days after his chemo visit to help with the nausea.

The pump finished up an hour or so ago, so I took it off. That involves cleaning the connection well with alcohol, allowing it to dry, then flushing the lines with sodium chloride and a syringe of heparin. I then carefully remove the tape patch that covers the connection to the port, and pull needle from the port. The needle seems huge but it doesn’t really hurt too much going in or out. The needle retracts when pulled out but you can see how long it is.

We continue on our anti-cancer diet eating. Darrel has been walking fairly regularly, I was but haven’t for a week and a half so need to get back into it. His weight is down but the doctor isn’t concerned. His initial weight loss was when he was so sick with the blood clots, and then the initial chemo. Now with cutting out sugar and flour, along with the walking, he has dropped some more. We will try to maintain his weight.