First week of chemotherapy and radiation comes to an end.

Today I had my fourth session of radiation which brings to a close my first week of combined radiation and chemotherapy. I’m told the side effects will get worse as treatment goes on but so far it’s going well. My main side effect from the chemotherapy is a terrible metallic taste in my mouth. It’s like I have a mouth full of pennies. I’m constantly popping lifesavers and hard fruity candy to try and dilute the taste but they never seem to last long enough. The particular type of chemo I’m on (5FU) tends not to have any terrible side effects (bad nausea and hair loss are not expected) but the method that it is administered ensures that any side effects I do have will remain for the entire 5-6 week period of treatment. Years ago 5FU was administered in weekly doses. You would go into the hospital for a half day and get the drug in a drip. This tended to intensify and concentrate the side effects in the first few days after they were administered. This meant you would feel terrible for 2-3 days then ok for 3-4 days and then the cycle would repeat itself. With new technology (port-a-cath and a heat driven Baxter infusion device) the drugs can be administered continuously over the week(s) of treatment, decreasing the cyclicity of the side effects and making for a more stable and predictable quality of life.

So far my radiation treatment is a non-event. I go in, lie on the table for 5 minutes, get zapped and go home. The main side effect of radiation is fatigue but so far I haven’t had any issues with that. There is also a chance of getting some diarrhea given the treatment location but so far so good in that department too. In order to make sure that they administer the radiation to the same spot each day I had to get tattoos so the radiation techs had landmarks to line me up in the same position each day. I was looking forward to maybe getting a skull on one hip and a snake with a lion on the other but the tattoo process was more prison style with a needle, a little blue ink and a single pin prick on each side. All I ended up with is a single dot on each side. Boring.