I'm at the end of Day 5, and this is what I now know about this new drug:
Worst. Nausea. Ever.
As in E-VER. (Please consider this is coming from the woman who was on anti-nausea meds for months in 2010, aka: the girl who could barely keep down 4 carrots at a time during radiation.)
Luckily, I have multiple prescriptions for nausea meds, so I'm able to overlap and take something every four hours. But man... the nausea is wicked. It's a force to be reckoned with, and is so strong that it will wake me up from a dead sleep an hour before it's time to take a pill. It's completely insane.
Besides the nausea, I've had this real awesome full body ache thing going on. Like the flu, but 52 times worse, because the aches are combined with all-over fluid retention and swelling that is out of this world.
At the end of Day 5, I can feel my collarbone again. So, that's movement in the right direction. (My face is still swollen and puffy, and the back of my head looks like a marshmallow... again, with the fluid retention.) But I'm starting to see the swelling recede, and now I can lie on my right side, which gives me an option for sleeping.
Word on the street is that nausea is the #1 side effect for this drug, and that it gets better in the second week, with little to no side effects in the third week. (Please know that I am laughing, even as I type this, seeing as how I'm still seeing side effects from the last chemo in my daily life... and it's been more than a month since my last infusion on that regimen. But whatever.)
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