After a week of delay, I started my 7th cycle of FOLFOX chemotherapy on a Tuesday, completed the cycle on Thursday, received a white blood cell booster injection on Thursday at the hospital and received another white blood cell booster injection on Friday at a clinic.
In terms of the side effects, surprisingly, I didn’t experience any jaw pain, finger cramp, eye pain and itchy palm. I hope they’re gone for good. The side effects that I had this round was severe constipation and weird sensation in the tongue only. I didn’t get the diarrhea spurts and frustrating heat rash this round. I wished I have the diarrhea spurts though because I find constipation worse than diarrhea spurts.
I was so constipated that I just refused to go to work on the Tuesday after chemo. I didn’t want to work from home too. I just wanted to be stress-free and focus on going to the toilet the whole day. Thankfully, I went to the toilet a couple of times that day but it didn’t stop me from worrying about an abdomen/pelvic pain I experienced.
Since my 5th chemotherapy cycle, I started to feel mild pain at my lower abdomen/pelvic. Oncologist didn’t think it’s a side effect of chemotherapy and thus I checked with my surgeon instead to see if it’s a side effect from the surgery or something else because it had intensified significantly during my severe constipation.
It turned out that I have internal injury. My abdomen area is still weak from the open surgery done in end Jan 2016. I probably injured myself during my hike at Setia Alam, carried heavy things or tried to poop too hard when I was constipated. Oh well. Now I have to be more graceful and be on daily constipation med so that I don’t worsen the injury and hope it recovers in 2 months. If it gets serious, I will need a surgery to fix it. Noooo.
Another incident that happened during this round of chemotherapy was the side effect of the two white blood cell booster I got post chemo. Oh man! It made my body ache like mad. It felt like my entire back was bruised (it’s not). I just didn’t want to move. I felt so tired and it lasted for about 48 hours. Huhu. I don’t like the booster injection.
Not forgetting, I went to a clinic in Klang to get my second booster jab on Friday because I didn’t want to travel 20+km to UMSC just for the injection. The nurse told me they could teach me to inject the drug myself but no way… I never look at the stringe during any injection because I’m afraid so there’s no way I can do the injection myself.
So at the clinic, the doctor gave me an unforgettable experience. Firstly, he couldn’t really process the fact that he’s seeing a young colon cancer patient. Secondly, he was so stressed up about giving me the injection because he has never done it before. I nervously asked him if he’s sure he wanna give me the injection and if he can figure out how to give me the injection.
Anyway, he gave me the injection and charged me RM20 for the service; I brought the drug package myself from UMSC. I’d not forget the way he injected me also. FYI, this injection is painful. I normally get it at the fatty layer of my tummy. When injected, it feels like someone is pinching me hard with sharp fingernails. This doctor however, have overpowered the injection pain with his pinching on my tummy to get hold of the fatty layers. I didn’t even know when he injected the drug because his pinch was so painful! Ouch…
So that’s the story of my 7th chemotherapy cycle. I’ve done the blood test for my 8th cycle and thankfully, the doctor let me pass! My platelets and white blood cell count were borderline so he’s giving me the booster injections again. I definitely pouted when he prescribed it to me. Anyway, he expects the next chemotherapy to be delayed based on my recent progress so let’s continue to rest more and be less active for the next 3 months 😕
