This is the sixth in a series of blog posts about my experiences as a cancer patient and survivor. Before we begin, I want to be clear that all opinions expressed here are my own. Nothing that I say in these posts should be taken as medical advice. If you have any questions or concerns, you need to reach out to a licensed medical professional immediately.

While “chemotherapy” can mean lots of things (drugs in pill form are still chemicals and still chemotherapy), when most people think of chemotherapy, they think of an IV infusion.

In case you’ve ever wondered what that is like, here’s a snapshot of my day at chemo, both pre- and post-surgery.

PRE SURGERY

My chemotherapy infusions were full-day marathons for the first six infusions.I would arrive at the cancer center, get blood drawn from my port, and wait to see the doctor. Every time I visit the center, they check my blood levels. In particular, they are checking to make sure my kidneys and liver are still functioning normally. We also check my iron level. Somewhere around chemo #3 or #4, I started developing anemia.

When I go back to the chemotherapy area, a nurse connects the IV line to my accessed port (my port is in my upper right chest/shoulder area). In the initial rounds of chemotherapy, I would receive four different chemo drugs, and I would also receive other medicines (like nausea medicine or steroids).

The order changed at one point, but each session, I would be given:

• Herceptin (a targeted drug for my HER2 + cancer)
• Perjeta (another targeted drug, designed to work with Herceptin)
• Carboplatin
• Taxotere

The Carboplatin and the Taxotere are what I call “scary chemo”, because these are the ones that tear your body down the most. The list of side effects they provide you with is terrifying—severe stomach problems, hair loss, heart and other organ damage and about forty other possibilities. But I was told early on that they provide you with a list of what might happen, bearing in mind that many of those side effects happen in a very small minority of people.

Overall, the infusions are fairly boring and uneventful, really. I would bring my laptop, iPad, and other materials and I worked every time. I even attended Zoom sessions.

However, my second round of chemo was not exactly uneventful.

During my second round, I was in a Zoom session with teachers from school (I think in a technology PD). They started my Taxotere drip, and things were fine… until they weren’t. All of a sudden, I felt very hot all over. I got dizzy. I could see in the Zoom camera that my face and neck were turning bright red, and the next thing I knew, the left side of my face had swollen and I was struggling to breathe.

I frantically pushed the call button, terrified that I was going to die alone in that hospital bed, but my hero nurses were at my side within seconds, and they knew exactly what to do. They gave me oxygen and pushed medicines in my IV to counteract the allergic reaction. My oncologist arrived and evaluated me, and thankfully, all was well (although I’m pretty sure my blood pressure went through the roof).

For future infusions, they gave me Benadryl and Pepcid before starting that medication, and I never had another reaction like that again.

The infusions took *forever* in the early days, because they give them to you a lot more slowly to see if you were going to react. I would arrive at the center as one of the first patients of the day, and I would be one of the last out the door, usually getting home around 4:30 or 5:00–making for a really long day.

At the end of the day, after all of the IVs were finished, I would get a Neulasta OnPro autoinjector put on my arm. The autoinjector would give me a measured dose of medicine the following day to help boost my immune system (without the autoinjector, you’d have to come in and get an actual shot). I did have the autoinjector fail one time, and I came in the next morning to get my booster.

POST SURGERY

Now that I am postoperative, I take maintenance chemotherapy every three weeks. I arrive at the center, have my blood drawn, occasionally see the oncologist (I’m down to every other visit now), and then go back to the chemo area. I have one medicine (Herceptin), and it takes maybe 30 minutes to run through the IV—and then I’m free to go on about my day! We will do the Herceptin until late July/early August (treatment protocol is that you receive one year of infusions).

I also take a pill daily, and will do so for five years. It’s called Tamoxifen, and the idea behind it is that it blocks my hormones so that any other nasty little cancer cells trying to hang out in there and find a place to latch on don’t have anything to eat and starve to death.

Next time, I’ll tell you more about the side effects of chemotherapy.