This Machine Killed Cancer

Rebekah, here.

Shayne’s central line surgery went well. And by well I mean, it happened a day late and a dollar short. Shayne checked in on Tuesday morning, I stayed at work to go to a handful of meetings and try to catch up after the holiday weekend. By the time my meeting was finished and I made it over to Chapel Hill, I was worried that I was going to miss his surgery.

Nope. He was sitting in his bed, fully clothed, reading “The Godfather.” Every now and then his nurse would come in to tell us there was no news except that he can’t eat until after the surgery. By 8pm they caved, admitted that the surgery was definitely not going to happen that night and let him eat dinner.

There’s recently been a change in protocol on the oncology floor. Instead of the oncology attending following Shayne’s case, a “hospitalist” writes all of the orders and checks up on Shayne every morning. That’s right, a “hospitalist” as in generally specializes in things that go on in a hospital. They aren’t geniuses who specialize in everything, and it doesn’t seem like they specialize in anything other than asking questions and making incorrect statements. A few of my favorite phrases uttered by Shayne’s most recent hospitalist included:

“I’ve never heard of etoposide and I’ve never seen it as part of a chemo regimen, but I doubt it will make you neutropenic.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you were supposed to get a central line.”

And after we told him several times that Shayne couldn’t start chemo until he got a central line, he asked “So how are you feeling now that you’ve gotten your chemo?”

Luckily there are amazing nurses on 4 Oncology who already knew the answers to all of these questions and were already working behind the scenes to make sure that his central line would definitely get put in the next day. Several phone calls, an upset pharmacist and one very persistent nurse later, Shayne was wheeled down to surgery. 

This, however, was the easy part.

We knew that this round of chemo was going to be intense, but since the normal protocol for mobilization is an outpatient infusion, we didn’t imagine that this one could be much stronger. We were wrong. 

Shayne’s currently getting a 4 day dose of Etoposide that drips around the clock and then every 24 hours, he doubles up with a 2-hour drip of Cytarabine.

Within a couple of hours of the first two bags being hung, Shayne started throwing up. He would stop for an hour or two just to start up all over again. Keep in mind that he just that day had a central line placed into his neck replete with stitches at his collarbone. He’s also too tired and in too much pain to sit up on his own, so I slept with one eye open all night waiting until I needed to spring into action, teal plastic bucket in hand.

After trying a number of nausea meds, we eventually found out that the only thing that worked was to give him all of them at the same time. Luckily two of the four meds also makes him sleepy, so he’s been asleep for almost 28 hours straight with the exception of the 10 or so minutes I wake him up every hour to give him eye drops, rinse his mouth out with saline or give him a foot rub.

He’s been quiet for a bit though, so I’m going to try to get some sleep before he gets his next dose.