Previous Post in this Series: Treatment – The First Week
Or Start at the beginning: Having Cancer as a Christian
After getting my first week of chemo in the hospital they sent me home. The first day I did pretty good. It was the second day and beyond that I didn’t do too well.
The last dose of chemo they gave me while in the hospital was Cisplatin. From what I was told that chemo is pretty intense due to a lot of heavy metals in it. Adding to that was that they infused me for 8 hours straight with it. It was so intense in fact that I had special anti-nausea medication specifically for it. This medication was called Emend and basically turns off the communication between your stomach and your brain so your brain doesn’t tell your stomach to get sick. It worked.
That second day I am happy to say that I didn’t get nauseated. Again, I would like to be able to say that it was because of my great faith and grounding in the Word of God. But it wasn’t. The medication, the fact that I didn’t eat anything for 2 days, and other people’s prayers are what carried me through.
Although I didn’t get sick in my stomach I felt sick, and weak. That was the worst that I had ever felt in my life.
I cannot really explain the physical feeling that I had. I just didn’t feel good at all, and a lot. My energy was sapped and I didn’t want to do anything. In fact for the first week after getting out of the hospital the only time I ventured downstairs was to make the daily trip to radiation down in Austin. I usually slept during the 30 minute ride there and back.
It was during this period of my treatment that yet another battle popped up that had to be addressed – eating.
As mentioned before the doctor had a feeding tube put in my stomach. The reason for this was that I was losing weight because I wasn’t eating much. The doctor said that it would only get worse as they started to treat me. Eating was important because it was unhealthy to continually lose weight as fast as I was losing it. Also, the body needed food so it would have energy to fight against the cancer and the chemo/radiation damage. Finally you’ve got to eat because if you don’t you die. Unfortunately I have been told that a lot of cancer patients actually die of malnutrition which is very, very sad.
So my main battle during this time was with my body and the feeding tube.
The first issue was that my body did not want food. I have to tell you, it is the weirdest experience in the world to know you need to eat but your body does not want to. Then when you finally do get something in your body it rejects it and gets sick, really sick.
My first experience with this was what is called “dumping syndrome” . It basically went like this – I would have a can of adult formula and then about 20 minutes later I would have the immediate urge to use the restroom for #2. I would stay there until my body forced everything out of me that it could. During that time my temperature would rise significantly to the point that I would be covered with sweat and felt like I was going to pass out. Once that was done I would be completely drained of energy for several hours.
After 2-3 cans and this happening the first day I was completely defeated. My wife called the nutritionalist to ask why this was happening. She said that I would just need to get used to it.
That was not the right answer.
My wife at that point reached out for prayer from several sources and we sought out to find an answer ourselves.
At our next day of radiation we mentioned what was happening to the nurse there and he suggested a diabetic formula that didn’t have sugar. See along with all of those symptoms I would feel like I had OD’d on sugar as well. I wasn’t diabetic but for whatever reason my body did not like these sugary formulas that we were trying.
We tried the formula that he suggested and it worked – no side effects!
I would like to say that the battle ended there but it didn’t.
The continual battle was fighting with my body to want to eat. It did not want food. I don’t know why but it didn’t. I continued to lose weight.
Knowing this I was getting weighted once a week at radiation. Each time the staff would shake their finger at me and tell my wife with who I would also get in trouble. This happened until I reach 150lbs – my weight in high school. At that point they said that if I continued to lose weight that they would need to stop treatment and give me nutrition intravenously which was risky.
It was at that point that I had to buckle down and force my body to eat – which sounds weird.
I did this by distracting myself by watching videos on the internet while I did it. At first I watched the Daily Show with John Stewart but then settled into watching Greg Groeschel on lifechurch.tv. Watching these messages not only helped distract me but helped to increase my faith.
I began eating more and more through my tube and while I dipped a little under 150 I was able to get it back up to that and maintain it. I believe that it was deciding that I was going to do it no matter what and the strength that I received from listening to God’s Word every day 2-3 times. It is amazing the inner strength you receive when your mind is saturated with what God has to say.
Next Post in this Series: Counseling and the Question of Surgery – Coming Soon!
Or Start at the beginning: Having Cancer as a Christian
