Crazy!! Week Three

Well I had my second chemo treatment Monday the 12th. I survived that OK, except that I got a cold over the weekend and so I felt awful going into my chemo. Because my blood counts were still reasonable they went ahead and gave me chemo. I had a sore throat, cough and sinus issues going into Monday, which progressed through the week. My nausea wasn't any worse than my first treatment, so that was nice, although with my sinus symptoms I felt worse. I was up coughing Wednesday and Thursday night which was horrible and my cough seemed to get worse. It got to the point that it was hard to talk because I coughed so much.

Then Friday night I had such a scary experience. I was having a hard time with the coughing and Scott and I were just relaxing and watching a movie. I was having a hard time breathing because I was coughing so much. I started becoming short of breath but I tried to relax. The movie ended and as I laid down to go to sleep all of a sudden I started having some sort of panic attack or something. All of a sudden I told Scott I couldn't breathe. There was not enough oxygen in the room. I asked him to open a window or something, I couldn't breathe and it felt like the walls were closing in on me. We went outside and I breathed in the cool air and it was the only way I could breathe. I still had such a hard time getting enough air. I kept trying to open my mouth wider and tilt my head back to get more air. Sounds silly but at the time it was all I could do. This attack lasted about 30 minutes where I couldn't get enough air. It was almost midnight and we called my Oncologist who said I needed to calm down and go to sleep. (Did I mention that I'm shopping for a new oncologist??) Anyhow he thought I was having a panic attack and Scott and I were worried I had something more serious like pneumonia or bronchitis. Anyhow, I eventually was able to breathe better and I went through a restless night of sleep.

I woke up Saturday morning and was really short of breath still, although nothing like the insane attack I'd had the night before. I had the strong feeling that we needed to go to the hospital because I couldn't kick the feeling that something had been really wrong with me the night before. I called another doctor of mine who was more concerned about me and encouraged us to go to the hospital to get a chest x-ray done.

So we spent the next 4 hours in the ER and they discovered that I in fact had pneumonia in the lower lobe of my right lung!! Is that insane or what?? When it rains it POURS! They said it was really good I came in because I caught the infection early..i'm currently on antibiotics. I was really glad they let me come home, they felt that being home away from infections was best for me.

Assuming my chest x-ray comes up clean later this week then I'll continue on course for the chemo. If I heal well from the pneumonia then it will just be another bump in the road.

As far as my heart palpitations, we are still waiting on the results from my heart monitor. In the hospital my heart rate ranged from 80-150. They couldn't figure it out. They did another EKG which came back fine, but they still aren't sure why my heart changes so much. And all I was doing was laying there...so there wasn't any reason for my heartbeat to change so much.

So again, I feel like I can sympathize with what it feels like to get old and get diseases and feel so helpless. I'm so tired of being sick...and I'm only on week 3 of 20 weeks of chemo!! Can you believe it? How will I ever manage? I guess one day at a time.

Anyhow, thanks for all the love, support and prayers.

Love,Heidi