FollowI had my 5th and final IV iron treatment–Infed–today. When my hematologist prescribed it, I had no idea it was 5 treatments. I thought it would be just one day of a 6 hour IV treatment, sitting in the treatment room with other patients receiving various medicines, including chemotherapy for some. But it turned out to be 5 such days, one each week for 5 weeks.
God bless those chemo patients. My side effects are bad enough, I can only imagine theirs. And for much longer than 5 weeks. Some were coming in several days a week for many more weeks. Some making impromptu trips to get medicine for nausea. God bless those nurses as well, they are angels wearing scrubs.
The first treatment wasn’t bad. I wasn’t really sure what was going on. After getting an IV in me, I received two small bags of clear something-or-other. I didn’t ask. After that, I got a small injection of the Infed and had to sit there an hour waiting to see if there would be a reaction. Then a very large bag went up on the IV pole, was injected with the Infed, and that dripped in over the course of 4 hours. I later learned that the two smaller bags were dexamethasone, a steriod, and diphenhydramine, which is Benadryl. An upper and a downer. LOL.
That first week, I had brought a book to read. The benadryl doesn’t want you to read a book, though. It wants you to sleep. When I awoke, I had sweat through every article of clothing anywhere I was touching the vinyl recliner I was sitting in. My hair was soaked as well. I originally thought it had been hot in the treatment room, I was by a window with open curtains and the sun was coming in, I didn’t notice because I was sleeping. Later I would learn it was the steroids.
So the day after the first treatment, my face was flush all day. I couldn’t sleep that night, I felt tired and anxious. I had hiccups all day. By Friday, I felt better, Saturday I felt great, Sunday I was starting to feel almost normal again. I was feeling like this was going to help. Then on Monday, treatment #2. And it started all over again. Well, eventually it started. It took them 4 attempts to get the IV in that day. I still have bruises to prove it.Each week, the side effects got worse. As I sit hear tonight my face is tingling like it’s waking up from being asleep. I know this will continue through the night. I’m very tired, but I can’t sleep. The steroids probably won’t let me sleep until late tomorrow night. I’m hot. I’m so terribly hot, like there’s a furnace inside of me that is blazing. Nothing helps. Not a/c, not fans, not eating crushed ice, nothing. I am on fire.
By tomorrow I should be fine except for hiccups and of course being tired. I’m looking forward for the pattern to continue, though, and for Thursday to arrive when I should feel better. And next Monday, there won’t be another treatment to bring me back down. I hear it takes several months to see the full benefits of the treatment. If it works. I am hopeful.
The worst part of all of it though was being there and watching the cancer patients. The sickest ones especially. Some had family members with them, many would sit there the entire time, others would come and go. I understand enough Spanish to have heard the wife of the man next to me when she came in with lunch and tried to get him to eat. She was very strong, very positive. A show I’ve put on many times for my own husband. Last week, a woman called into the nurses, I heard them asking her to come in for some nausea meds. She came in alone, spent much of her time on the phone, not asking the person on the other side of the phone for help with her words, but pleading for it with her tone. A daughter came in with her father each week, she knew the drill. Got him set up in his recliner, got him water, two blankets, made him comfortable. Then pulled up one of the straight-backed conference room chairs available to visitors and settled in herself for a long, uncomfortable day. Helping him to the bathroom every half hour or so. That’s another drill we all go through because of all the fluids. Every half hour to 45 minutes, we’d stand up, unplug our IV pump from the wall, hobble through the bathroom door with the entire pump, then hobble back afterwards, plug the pump back in, and sit back down.
I feel like I got to experience A LOT these last 5 weeks. And every bit of it has been experience that I know I have learned from. Every part of it will add to my growth as a human being. I know I was there getting treatments of my own–very simple treatments compared to the others–but I got to be a visitor in their world and I noticed them. I had a box seat view of the front-lines, where people are fighting for their lives every day, one IV at a time. During a time where turning on the television shows people losing their minds over politics, watching these people compartmentalized all that pomp and circumstance as simple mundanities of life. Because no matter what decision gets made in November, there will still be rooms like this filled with people fighting for survival from a disease that doesn’t care if you are a Republican or a Democrat, a conservative or a liberal. It just wants you to give up hope.