What the FU?

The chemotherapy regimen for Stage III colon cancer that I am on is commonly known as FOLFOX.  It is made up of three drugs: Folinic Acid (leucovorin), Fluorouracil (5-FU) and Oxaliplatin.  So...my routine is this...every other Thursday I go into the hospital and have bloodwork drawn and analyzed...I then sit and await the results of the bloodwork as they check that my white and red blood cell counts / hemoglobin are "healthy" enough to undergo another treatment session.  After the results of the bloodwork, I head to the Treatment room to find a comfortable recliner where I will lay for the next few hours.  One of the wonderful nurses in the Clinic starts a Dextrose IV drip and then gives me a capful of pills - the much needed anti-emetics designed to prevent chemo-induced nausea.  About a half hour later I am hooked up to two chemo infusion bags through the PICC line in my arm and I sit while they infuse for about two hours.  Actually...I sit and then I get up and go pee...sit, get up and go pee...sit, get up and and pee...almost clockwork..every 15 minutes or so.  Then, after the two IV bags are depeleted, the nurse injects a loading dose of the third chemo drug and hooks me up to an infusion bottle that literally looks like a baby bottle.  Over the next 46 hours I am forever joined with the bottle and it slowly infuses until sometime Saturday afternoon when my homecare nurse visits me in home and disconnects the infusion, flushes out my PICC line ports, changes my dressing and checks on my overall health.

Although every patient reacts uniquely to their chemotherapy regimen there are some consistent side effects for FOLFOX that are becoming ever more "fun" to navigate through....Almost immediately on Day 1 of the treatment I have been super sensitive to cold.  Touching anything cold with my fingers is a no-go...it feels as though needles are being stuck into the fingertips as soon as I grasp anything from the refrigerator or freezer.  Cold drinks are a no-go as well :-( and what a lousy time of year to be off cold drinks.  I have no other way to describe it but that the back of my throat goes numb and it feels as though it would choke on the drink. That goes hand in hand of course with the almost constant but not quite sore throat and strange taste in my mouth.  In a previous post I talked about the impact on my sense of taste and appetite...and this is only getting worse for me as I go through treatment.  The most intense and difficult to manage side effects in my experience are the gastro-intestinal ones....everything from almost constant nausea, heartburn, hiccups, sour stomach, constipation one day, diarrhea the next day, loss of appetite. 

This time around the fatigue has been more intense and it set in earlier on.  I have spent the vast majority of the past three days since my last post Saturday night either laying down on the couch or in bed...just too damn tired to get up and with an upset GI tract to boot.   It might just be time to put a call into my Onc team for relief. 

I cannot wait to say a big "FU" to 5-FU and to FOLFOX