So I thought I'd give everyone the "run down" of how I've found about each chemo to go. Thankfully I have just one more to go!!
Day 1: Usually I go to chemo about 3 or 4ish in the afternoon and it's a 2 and a half hour process. (I go in every other Friday.) Then as soon as I get home from a treatment I start drinking water like crazy!! Someone else I knew who did chemo suggested that you should drink a lot of water - and I really think it helps!! I slacked one time and felt more "off" and "icky" than usual for the rest of the week. Anyways, I continue to drink lots of water especially throughout the first week). I don't normally notice any symptoms other than I'm tired a little earlier at night than usual.
Days 2-4: Ughhhhh! I get this disgusting, stale, chemical taste in my mouth that won't go away! Also I find that food doesn't taste right and food that I normally really enjoy can taste so gross (so I suggest to those doing chemo to eat food you don't like as much so you don't have negative feelings towards those foods later.) Because of that gross aftertaste, I usually drink a lot of tea or something else in place of plain water as regular water can taste gross. To avoid brushing my teeth/swishing with mouthwash like 2039438 times a day to get rid of that taste, I find chewing some strong, mint flavored gum does the trick! Not to mention I find that mint keeps the nausea feelings away. Also, during these days is when "chemo brain" usually strikes! I find it hard to multitask, or study during these days. Sometimes I'll totally forget what I was planning to do! But I usually figure it out shortly after forgetting.
Days 5-14: Usually I'm feeling more back to normal by about day 7. But I get tired on and off throughout this period, and sometimes I need a nap or some caffeine. I think being on summer break right now has been so helpful as I can go to bed and sleep in really late everyday! Back in the beginning though I had trouble sleeping more than 4 hrs at a time because the steroids they gave me kept me wired, but now I'm sleeping much better.
Overall, chemo sucks, but I am VERY thankful that the symptoms have been pretty minimal. During the spring semester I was still able to keep up with school and did really well in all of my classes. For this summer, I've been busy taking a summer class and working a little here or there, and during July I played in the pit orchestra for a community theater (so fun!!!). I think staying somewhat busy - but not stressed helped me a lot. I found that when I spent a lot of time cooped up in the house I'd worry about how I felt from chemo, and that would actually make the icky, off feelings you get worse.
My last piece of advice to those undergoing chemo is to avoid orange juice and all other highly acidic fruits/juices. In the 22 some weeks I've been doing chemo I can honestly say I've only had two episodes of vomiting, once because I was way too stressed out about taking the GRE, and the other because I drank orange juice. There was one week where I felt nauseous from mid-morning till the evening everyday and I thought that it was just a side effect from chemo. I figured that the nausea had caught up to me and I would just have to accept it, but once I stopped drinking the OJ the daily nausea went away and never came back.
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