Nausea & Me

Over the past year nausea & I have developed a close, personal relationship.  Meningitis, when it's in full swing, causes such a gut wrenching nausea that you get sick until there is nothing left inside your stomach, until the bile has burned your throat and scorched your tongue and all you can do is cry weakly in between bouts.  The poor nurses obviously feel horrible for me as they desperately pump Zofran and Phenergan alternately into my IV as often as they can.  The only relief comes when the anti-nausea medication works in conjunction with the Dilaudid to give me an hour or two of fitful sleep here and there.  I'm not sure if this reoccurring meningitis has given my stomach a predilection for queasiness but I am far more sensitive to certain smells and tastes now.  Foods that I used to love in the past need to be avoided at all costs and the scent of Jimmy's favorite meatloaf in the oven is enough to make me gag.  

Then there's the chemo.  For me, on the pill form, it causes a low grade nausea.  Something that's just stewing in my stomach and waiting for the right moment to flare up in full.  It's like that slight, but very annoying, headache that buzzes in the back of your head all day.  Now that I'm currently waiting for insurance approval of the IV chemo, I can only imagine that the nausea will be worse on a stronger dose like that.  We will see.  

In the last year I have also developed coping mechanisms to handle the nausea.  I have found certain foods that seem to settle my stomach and my amazingly wonderful husband is quick to run out for them at the first sign of nausea.  I was not blessed to have children with Jimmy but I just know that he would have been that husband that ran out in the middle of the night to get me Starbursts, Pringles and a container of cream cheese.  After the first bout of meningitis, the only food that I could eat was cold food such as a Frosty from Wendy's, salads, cottage cheese, pudding or yogurt.  It took nearly a year for me to start drinking hot coffee again and forget about eggs...I used to eat them almost every day but the idea of a scrambled egg now...blahhh!  

Meghan's Nausea Relief List

   1.  Zofran-better living through chemistry!

   2.  A Wendy's Frosty

   3.  A mocha frappe from McD's (are we sensing the cold, sweet, chocolately theme?)

   4.  Laffy Taffy's

   5.  A Slim 4 with cheese from Jimmy Johns

I can't tell you how many times Jimmy has dropped everything and ran to get one, or all, of these items for me.  I am one lucky woman!   

Life after the first treatment

I settled in last Friday night with some Laffy Taffy's (of course!), a few past episodes of the Duggars and my first chemo treatment.  I was nervous about how it would go so I escaped into someone elses crazy life for a bit.  About halfway through Michelle's birthday surprise show the side effects started.  I was extremely dizzy (good thing I was on the couch!) with a yucky taste in my mouth.  My lips were tingling and soon, I was just flat out exhausted.  I crawled into bed about an hour later and then the nausea began.  Thankfully, due to the advice I found online to take the chemo at night, I was able to sleep through most of the nausea.  I spent all day Saturday in bed....sleeping and reading while occasionally cradling a puke bucket (sad to say, this has become normal for me), but thankfully the nausea didn't get too out of hand.  I was able to eat bland food most of the weekend (couldn't manage dinner Sunday night but that loss of calories is certainly not going to hurt me!) and keep it down which was much better than I expected.

Fast forward a few days and it's the middle of next week, two days away from my next treatment and I'm starting to feel back to my pre-chemo self.  If this pattern holds, I'll have two days of feeling well each week and the rest spent in bed.  I hope my body is able to "push through" the side effects like some people I read about and that this isn't a lasting problem.  We are cautiously optimistic that we've seen the worst of it but I was told it could take two to three weeks for the side effects to fully kick in, waiting until the chemo was built up in my system so we will see.  For now, we've rearranged most of our social calendar to allow us to stay home on the weekends and we will just play the waiting game.

"Taste and see that the Lord is good.  Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in Him!" Psalm 34:8