Monday, July 2, 2007

Starting Chemotherapy . . .

Dad is starting chemotherapy this morning. He will be on on a continuous intravenous drip 24/7 for the next 7 days. Over that time he will get daunorubicin for all seven of those days, which is a type of anthracycline. For the first four of those days he will also receive a second drug (I can't remember the name).

The doctor describe this like fertilizer. We will spread this fertilizer out for a week or so, but it will take up to a week for all of the bone marrow cells to die off (which is the idea). It will take another two weeks to rebuild his cell count. He will be in the hospital all of that time. Ugh.

The freakiest part of this is the toxicity of these drugs. The nurses glove and smock up, to avoid any contact with the drug. It can be very corrosive to the skin. They also warned my Mom, that if he vomits to treat it like toxic waste. In otherwords, don't touch it, glove up and dispose of it in plastic baggies. One treatment that we have talked about involves pumping arsenic into the blood stream. ARSENIC! What the hell!

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