Just diagnosed with cancer

unknown said:

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CherylHutch said:

Good Questions!
Hey Jenben... those are all very good questions! Once you've started your chemo therapy, a lot of this just falls into place and we understand it without really thinking about it... so when the questions are posed, it takes a little thought to come up with the answers

1) Naaa... the needle is pretty secure and I wouldn't worry about it too much. Once it is in the port, then they do tape it down with a big square of transparent adhesive that really does keep it secure.

Now... having said that, of course I have to babble a personal story of mine. Me and the dog were lazing around on the bed during one of my 3 days of being on the pump, watching the finale of Canadian Idol. I noticed that the area around the adhesive was damp and checked. The needle still appeared to be in fine but there was definitely a wetness under the adhesive that was seeping through. Well, darn!! There was still 30 minutes to go of the finale for Canadian Idol... so I called my friends, Mimi and her hubby Nathan, who live in the apartment upstairs from me and said, "Hey guys... something weird is happening with the needle and port for my chemo so I thin a trip to Emergency might be called for... BUT... there's still half an hour of Canadian Idol, so how about if I meet you in the carport at 11pm??" Of course Mimi freaked out but I reassured her that we would only be sitting around Emerg for that long anyways and chances are they won't have the tv turned on to Canadian Idol

So, in answer to your question... don't freak out, but if it were to come out then you can go to your nearest hospital emerg and they can fix you up. Meanwhile, I found out from my chemo nurses that there is a shut-off valve to the port, so you could just shut that off until you got yourself to Emerg or to the chemo unit where you get your chemo hooked up.

2) You know, the nice thing about chemotherapy is that it is therapy designed for YOU and for your cancer. We can all be very generic here and say we all have a particular cancer (IE: Colon Cancer or Rectal Cancer or even more generic, Colorectal Cancer), and yes, there are "standard" therapies for each one. BUT, your chemotherapist (usually that's your oncologist but it could be different from state to state) can take in your personal situation, your health, your age, and numerous other factors and come up with a therapy that will best benefit you. For instance... my tumour had perforated through my intestine, maybe yours hadn't. My bet is I weigh a lot more than you do... so weight would come into play as to how much chemo I would get vs you but that we'd both have the same benefit. I happen to, other than the cancer, be as healthy as a horse, have a strong heart, no other organs are affected, I don't smoke, I don't drink, blah, blah, blah. So that would be make my treatment different than say someone who is very thin, has heart disease, diabetes, smokes like a fiend and is an alcoholic. Ok, those are extremes, but you get my drift... no two people are exactly alike and thank goodness we aren't all given just one kind of treatment because we'd all react differently... yet in the old days, that was how it was done.

3) I think I answered the question "how do oncologists decide how often and what kind of chemo you'd need" in #2, but, I'm not an oncologist so therefore don't have the training they do. Let me tell you, those oncologists are very, very special people! Not only do they have the training as to the kinds of chemo and what works best and why, they also take into account you as a person, your lifestyle, your work if you are still working, or if you aren't working, your state of mind. So many things come into play.

4) Although this was not a question, I'll give some other advice here too... do NOT be surprised or anxious if your oncologist up and changes your treatment plan at any given time. Some people get soooo upset and make themselves depressed, when in fact, your oncologist is monitoring the plan they have put you on and if they see you are having problems with it (too sick, neuropathy, pains, whatever) then they will adjust it for you. They are thinking about what is in the best interests of YOU, not what most people can or can't tolerate. My oncologist told me at the beginning she was going to bombard me with as much as my body could take and that we would be aiming for 8 cycles every two weeks (4 hours on IV at the Cancer Clinic and then 48 hours on the portable pump). So I thought... ok, 8 cycles, I can do that! Then I also had to have 6 weeks of daily radiation.. so she changed the chemo treatment to the pill form. She said it would be easier on my system while going through the radiation since the radiation will do a fair amount of abuse to my body and energy, but she still wanted me to have chemo in my system. The pill form was a milder form but works really well in conjunction with radiation. Once the radiation was finished, it was back to the IV for four hours and the pump for 48 hours.

You ask anyone else here on the board and they will give you either a similar routine, or a completely different one... and that's because we are all individual people with oncologists who are looking out for our best interests and not as a group as a whole There's also a big difference between "after surgery" chemo, "before surgery" chemo, or "Maintenance" chemo. So it really depends where people are in their journey to fight the beast

Ok... do you think I could have babbled anymore??? LOL!! But if I missed a question or you come up with more... you know we are all here to do our best to answer them Keep those questions coming!!

Hugggggs,

Cheryl

polarprincess said:

dog?
if you have a dog be careful- i woke up one morning and my dog had chewed the pump shoulder band thing and also a tiny hole in the tubing. I was horrified. When i am on the pump, i sleep in the couch kind of in an upright position so my needle isn't affected, and i also put the pump on a table beside me.