BEP Round 1 Day 3

I am adding a 4th "ranking" to the P(pain)N(Nausea)T(Tiredness) set. After last night's crappy feeling not really fitting well into any of those categories I am going to do just an O (Overall). So an O of zero would be perfectly normal, and a 10 would be I feel like I am about to explode into thousands of little space slugs bent to take over the world (slither reference look it up) . HAHAHA I dont' know what a 10 would be, it would just "bad". So for example, I would have rated last night's "urgh" feeling as a O:4 P:1 N:5 T:5. Overall tired, light body ache, feeling like any stray smell could have made me vomit and just overall crappy feeling. Oh and my scale is linear not logarithmic, ie 4 is 2x as bad as 2 not 100x as some scales do it. So here we go with Day 3.

6am - O:2 P:0 N:2 T:0
I feel like I have recovered A LOT from last night. I still don't feel perfectly normal but I am much better. Chemo doesn't start until 9:30 so I have a bit until then. I am trying to wake up and have a somewhat normal schedule even on days where my treatments aren't consistently timed. I know I still show a 2 on my overall but I debated a 1 there. I still have a pretty bad taste in my mouth but the smell trigger thing seems to have gone away.

7:15am - O:1 P:0 N:3 T:0
Ok let me start off by saying my favorite things for breakfast are eggs and bacon. If you put them in a breakfast burrito with some salsa or on a toasted bagel I am in heaven. Now yesterday I made a bagel for breakfast for myself while I was feeling so good in the morning. I thought I would try that again this morning. Well, lets just say a N:2 is probably my limit for doing that. I didn't have any issues with smells while cooking it, in fact it smelled great. However while cooking it I had some juice and some ginger ale which didn't sit so well. I took a couple of bites once i was finished with it to "test the waters" and the first couple were ok but I got about 60% through it and I had to stop. It tasted good, it smelt fine it just wouldn't seem to keep "down" it felt like everything I ate just sat in my esophagus waiting for a chance to run away! I forced myself (maybe not the best thing) to eat the rest of the bacon out of it for the calories/fat/protein because I knew I hadn't eaten much yesterday. All in all it worked out ok, but if I need to take my nausea feeling a bit more seriously. My dosage of Zofran was RIGHT before I ate, maybe if I had waited an hour after I took it it would have helped. On a positive note, once I was done eating I felt much better and cleaned the kitchen, loaded up the dish washer and sanitized the cabinets. Jenn does so much for me right now, its nice to do a little while I am not feeling horrible. Bring on day 3!

11:45 - O:3 P:0 N:3 T:6
Going well. Burned through the platinum easy. Started my friend the Etoposide at full 400mlph (Full for ME that is, since I think its supposed to be like 543mlph standard but that just turned me into a lobster so .. HAHAHA) from the start. About 5 minutes in I got some mild tightening in my chest. Thinking back to my days with asthma its sort of like a very mild attack but not bad certainly managable.

TIP!!: So I just discovered that my pepermint hand Sanitizer is a great cover up for all those offending smells out there. If I spray it from about elbow down on both hands the smell is strong enough to drown out everything else. Granted I smell like crazed Xmas killer that uses pepermint sticks shaved into blades to dispatch my victims but hey it works O:-)

1:25 - O:1 P:0 N:1 T:2
Wednesday is done!  Actually I feel quite good right now, probably still have some of the wonderful "pre-med" mixture in my veins so that's helping.  But I don't really even feel that tired from the Benadryl which is interesting.  I had a couple little itchy/shortness of breath for a few seconds with the Etoposide but all in all today went really smoothly.  We shall see how the next several hours plays out since yesterday I just crashed out of no where and woke up many hours later HAHAHA. Anyway here is your pic of the day, me trying to deal with the nausea issues with some wonderful metal flavored crackers (think about it for a second) and some ginger soda.

Oh and here is a pic, courtesy of my wife, of the peppermint spray I am using from Whole Foods that's doing such a good job of drowning out all the other bad smells.  Now I am using it every 30-45 minutes from the elbows up so I am sure i will burn through them but its really helping so we thought we would share:

6:10 - O:1 P:0 N:0 T:2

So this is the second day in a row I have basically "crashed" for a few hours in the afternoon.  I knew it was coming this time and went and laid down in bed and set an alarm.  Woke up ~2 hours later and I feel much better.  Honestly, this isn't a big deal in my book.  Overall I am handing the chemo well, AND I am taking these dern Benadryl shots each day so for me to need a little nap in the afternoon to reentergize I figure why not.  If it starts getting excessive and I am sleeping 4+ hours in these "naps" then I will reconsider it but right now I think its fine.  I feel great right now, no nausea, no pain, a little sleepy (I mean I did just wake up!) and overall a bit blah but not too bad.  Now I just need to get active, get my blood pumping and maybe eat some beets to boost my iron!

===== Day Summary =====
O:2 P:0 N:3 T:4
So today started out sort of on a stinky note, I wasn't feeling all that great and I had a hard time downing my breakfast.  However, once I got the pre-meds in me before they started the chemo I was feeling MUCH better.  The steroids and the IV Zofran turned me around quite a bit.  The platinum went quick and without incident (aside from the taste it gives to everything like metal crackers).  We didn't "ramp up" the Etoposide today and just started at the 400 speed and aside from a few little shortness's of breath and some red/itchy on my chest/neck it went pretty well.  I discovered soaking my hands and arms in a peppermint spray pretty much takes the "smell" part out of the nausea at least for 30-45 minutes at a time.  I took a nap in the afternoon, which I might make a common thing it seems to help as long as its bounded and I drink fluids before hand to keep from waking up over dehydrated like the first time.  I ate pretty well for dinner and probably over ate, my stomach is a bit upset now with that feeling from the morning where everything is right at the TOP of my stomach waiting to get out but its manageable. Overall I think it was a good day, learned some lessons for how to approach the coming days/weeks/months.  My only concern going into tomorrow is that I don't have an Emend predose, its only a 3 day dose pack for a 5 day schedule.  I am hoping I don't have a big ramp up in the nausea tomorrow, fingers crossed!