Side Effects and Which Sides They Effect... (A flashback from February 2015)

For years we’ve all seen ads on television for a variety of medications that treat a wide range of illnesses. Each of these miracle remedies brings with it a number of really fun and entertaining side effects. The ones for anxiety and depression have warnings that alert the one taking them that they may get diarrhea, feel nausea or experience sexual dysfunction. I don’t know about you, but if I would think that any of these things occurring on a regular basis would be a cause for depression. One commercial that I recently saw was for a medicine that treated diabetes. They warned that this treatment could cause weight gain. The last time I checked, weight gain was a detriment to someone trying to control diabetes. Does someone do the math on these things? At the end of the day, the cures for pretty much everything will also carry with them a whole host of amusing side effects.

When I started my chemo, I was told that a common side effect of my therapy would be neuropathy, a desensitizing of my extremities. I could expect to feel numbness or tingling in my hands and feet as therapy continued. As a person who drives, I thought this sounded perfect for getting behind the wheel of a car and pulling onto the freeway and driving at high rates of speed without knowing whether or not my foot would know how hard it was pressing on the gas pedal. Don’t all of you feel safe?

We’ll get to my personal experience with these drugs in a moment, but I’d like to tell about my days following radiation and those side effects.

I finished radiation and thought I had escaped the gift basket of joy that usually follows treatment. I was wrong. Wrong, I say! A full week after I had stopped getting treated, I started to develop sores in my throat which made it impossible for me to eat anything of substance. Things that were a little sour or salty ripped at my lesions. Also pleasant were things that were too hot or too cold. After a few days of eating broth that was served at the “Goldilocks temperature”, I discovered that swallowing pills became a chore. It felt like my Adam’s apple was flipping over in my throat and scraping away at the back part. Soon, even taking fluids was difficult. We called up Dr. K’s nurse to let her know that things were not pleasant and asked if we could get the remedy that numbed the passageway so that I could eat… somehow.

We got the prescription that was called BMX. The last time I thought about those three letters, I thought of racing bikes. Well, I wasn’t that far off. The liquid was a thick, synthetically sweet concoction that smelled and tasted of burning bicycle tires and saccharine. I had to take the syrup about 30 minutes before eating. The desired effect in my throat usually wore off by the time I actually ate anything, but my mouth remained numb. This was not a pleasant experience. I got to the bottom of the bottle before my throat healed, but because it didn’t really work out, I chose to not get the prescription refilled. Fortunately for me, my throat was as little better a few days later. The nurse at the chemo lab remarked that I had lost a lot of weight in the past two weeks. No shit?

Around the same time that the throat thing happened, I also lost patches of hair along the hairline on my back of my head. I got up one Sunday morning and noticed that it looked like someone had taken bites out of the lower corners of a Pop Tart. I honestly had to laugh at that, which I did for about ten minutes. I then had to try to make it not look like that and to make it look like a natural hairline.

About a week later, the same “Pop Tart” thing happened to the beard on my neck. Again, more laughing ensued. I looked at it like this: I hate shaving (who doesn’t?) and now I had less to shave! The problem is that I need to make sure I maintain that or it becomes really obvious that there’s something a little “off” with that area.

Another surprising thing was that I had lost a patch of chest hair. Well, it really wasn’t all that surprising; I was just surprised that it hadn’t happened earlier. It wasn’t much of a loss at first, but it continued to develop and now it is a nifty little rectangle that runs from my neck to the middle of my sternum. The amusing thing about this rectangle is that it’s perfectly lined up with the part of my beard that is still left on my neck. How is it that the part of my beard that was affected is not in line with the part of my chest? Weird.

I digress, so let’s get back to the chemo lab. The Velcade shots that I was getting in my abdomen were causing me to develop itchy spots at the injection points. They would be fine for the first couple days and that would be followed by a mild burning sensation that would dry out and become really itchy as the week wore on. I was given the option to have it administered to me in my arm, but declined as it seemed like these were meant to be injected in my abdomen. Around my navel they went over a three week period, each time leaving a new pink spot of itchy dry skin. It wasn’t until my fourth treatment that a nurse who felt squeamish about giving the injections in the abdomen insisted on poking me in my arm. I’m an accommodating type, so I went with it and let her do what she needed to do. Guess what? No rash! We learned something this week!

Another thing that comes with chemotherapy (and I almost forgot to mention this) is a condition some people affectionately refer to as “chemo brain”. It’s an endearing name for a condition in which the chemicals leave you with cognitive impairment. It’s like, as they used to say on the old show, Quantum Leap, it leaves your brain “Swiss cheesed”. A lot of things connect, but sometimes they hit a hole and the information keeps traveling into the ether.

Right now I am having problems finding the right words when I speak. I also have issues with math or even making sense of e-mails unless things are explicitly explained to me in them. Please don’t reference something I may have looked at a week ago for a moment because I am not going to remember it at all! If you need me to do something, please just tell me what you need me to do. Don’t make me have to read the e-mail 25 times before I can make heads or tails of the assignment or request. I ask this of my employer, my friends and even Lou.

I am often amazed when I can figure something out quickly because there are days where I feel like I am as dumb as a box of hair. That’s a thing, right?

Anyhow, I waited for the neuropathy to hit me, but the Revlimid did not give me numb hands or feet. Well, it hasn’t yet. I’ve got a couple more cycles of chemo ahead of me before I go through the stem cell transplant, a subject I’ll address later. No, Revlimid is providing me with the constant taste of plastic in my mouth. Some of the other recent side effects of this drug have included sensitivity of the skin on the outer sides of my forearms, the nape of my neck and the right side of my face. I was recently on a break from the Revlimid and was free of these awesome things. I just started my third round of chemo and this one has been adjusted up from a 14-day on/7-day off cycle to a 21-day on/7-day off cycle. I can’t wait to see what happens next!

Oh, and a side effect of the illness itself is that I lost almost an inch of height due to some bone loss in my spine. It’s not like I am a tall person to begin with, so that inch kind of meant a lot to me.

I am tired all the time and need naps to make it through the day. The most awesome thing is when the Dexamethasone (a steroid) they give me at chemo keeps me hopped up and I cannot get to sleep even though I am exhausted. I’ve discovered that Ambien and Zzz-Quil in combination usually gets me to sleep and keeps me there. Well, that is generally the case unless I have to get up to relieve myself in the middle of the night. This rarely used to occur, but now I am up two to three times a night and that really doesn’t help me with the sleep issue. No, these are not “old man problems”. At least they aren’t yet!

Oh, wow-- I almost forgot (chemo brain again)!! Do you know what the best side effect of Revlimid is? Revlimid, the drug I take to get rid of this cancer, opens me up to more easily developing other types of cancers! Isn’t that special?

There’s an old Porky Pig / Daffy Duck cartoon where Porky runs a hotel and has a mouse causing trouble for his guests. Daffy, posing as a pest control worker, comes in with a cat to get rid of the mouse. The cat refuses to leave, so then he has to bring in a dog. I think he brings in a lion next to get rid of the dog and then an elephant to get rid of the lion before he finally has to bring the mouse back in to get rid of the elephant. It seems like this drug therapy is a bit like that. Eventually, everything leads back to the Revlimid.

So there we are with side effects. Why is it that side effects are always unpleasant? Why can’t there be side effects where I wake up each morning to find myself looking more and more like a Chris (Evans, Pratt or Hemsworth, if you please), Bradley Cooper, Jon Hamm or Ewan McGregor? Side effects don’t make you better looking, more talented, more interesting, smarter or richer; they just make you wish there weren’t any side effects.

And also not ill.