Day 82

Last March Addison was in the hospital for a couple days and there was something that happened during my stay that reminded me of her stay. The nurses work from 7 to 7 so twice a day, a new nurse came in and introduced themselves. At that point, they all did the same thing and asked me the exact same questions:  when did you find out you had cancer, what type of cancer, what type of chemo, when did it start, is it still going, when was it/will it be over, etc. This is not only the MOST annoying thing they could do, it's totally lacking efficeny. The first Nurse could have taken 3 minutes and filled something out and posted it on the door or in the file and I would not have needed to answer the questions again. I remember questioning the nurse during Addison's stay as to why everyone was asking us the same questions and her response was that it made it easier for them to work on a baby if they knew what was going on with them. Obviously the nurses don't care as their objective is to help you for 12 hours and they need the info but from a patient view, the system needs to be changed.

Over the course of the treatment, I have received so many shots and needle pokes that I stopped keeping track. It's just something you deal with and at one point on Saturday, they drew blood from the port, my left hand and my right arm for samples from different areas. So, on Sunday, a nurses came in and said I was going to get a white blood cell shot. I didn't think much of this as I've been getting the Neulasta every 3 weeks. She proceeded to lift my shirt and poke me on the left side of my belly. As she started to push the medicine in, I though I was going to scream. The Nurses at Reznicks office take their time and push the medicine in slow. I am clear that this nurse won the 2007 Gold medal for emptying a syringe in under a second with No concern for causing pain to the patient. This stuff burned so bad and I was squirming around like a fish (not sure what that could accomplish except maybe snapping the needle off) hoping to offset the pain. I couldn't touch the area of the shot and it hurt for about and hour. On Monday, a different nurse came in with some medicine and I saw the shot. I asked the nurse if she would go slower than the lady did on Sunday and she said she would.  She proceeded to poke me on the right side of my belly and started injecting the medicine. She went a little slower, but not much, and I repeated my fish moves to ease the pain. I can not think of anything as painful as these 2 shots in my belly and if they would have wanted to give me one on Tuesday, they might have needed to strap me down. There would have been NO way I would have let them do that again. This was the most painful part of the treatment. That might seems like a curious statment after 12 weeks of chemo but most of the time you feel sick although there is not a lot of direct pain.

I am feeling pretty good right now and have full intentions of going to work on Monday. I have scans today at 1pm and blood work after that.

Sam