Claritin and a Transfer Button

So I've got to write this down before I forget and while it's still funny right now. It wasn't funny a few weeks ago but now I can laugh at it. I'm having a hard time sleeping due to the heat and my night sweats and hot flashes aren't helping at all, so I thought I'd try to get caught up on my blog.

I've got to put this blog entry in so I will remember some of the commical sides to this fun adventure this year. For my last four chemo rounds, I've taken a different chemo drug called Paclitaxel. Like any drug taken, it has many side effects. Some I've written about and some left private for modesty reasons.

The night before I go into these treatments I'm to take 5 Dexamethasone. I was told it's a steroid to help with some of the side effects that can take place when they give me this chemo like: shortness of breath, my chest feeling like it's only got 25% of the capacity to breath that it normally does, bad charly horses in my legs, etc. And that's when they warned me that they'd have several nurses watching me the first 15 minutes in case I had a reaction and so forth. My first thought was, "Wow 5 pills! You couldn't condense those into one? And three nurses? What's going to happen that you need 3 nurses watching me like a hawk for 15 minutes?" And these are the things they tell you about, but I've learned over the past several months there's many things they don't tell you about. Hence, why we need what I call the "Transfer Button."

I love my doctor and nurses! I don't want anyone to take from this differently, but sometimes what you read and study in a book can be different then what's happening in front of you. Everyone knows what I'm talking about. You don't have to be sick with cancer to have the age old problem of trying to explain to the doctor the symptoms you're feeling inside your body. It's like taking the car to the mechanic and trying to mimic the sound the car is making and he should just know what's wrong when you make that sound right?

Well, I was given the short side effect list above before treatment, but no one warned me of the bone pain I quickly experienced after I went home. I was told that if I did start to experience leg pain to take a Claritin. A Claritin? Ok, I'm not an expert on medication but I've seen enough commercials to know that Claritin is an allergy drug. It helps with sneezing, runny nose, itchy, watery eyes, itchy throat or nose, that kind of thing. No where on that list does it include helps with bone pain. He said to take one pill a day for three days when I receive my injection shot the day after chemo. He said that they've had great results with patients who've done this. Great! So we purchase Claritin on the way home, because who am I to question the doctor on something he says works for others. Seemed like an easy solution to something that could cause a lot of muscle pain from what was being described to me. Again, how Claritin was to help with that, I didn't understand but I followed the doctors orders.

24 hours later I received my injection and about 3-4 hours later my flu like symptoms had set in but so did the bone pain. It started in my skull and moved down my neck and across my shoulders. It then shot pains down my legs or sometimes it feels like fireworks of pain in my legs. This lasted 3-4 days like he said but it wasn't muscle pain it was bone pain. So when I saw him again a week later for my follow-up appointment, I explained to him what I had experienced, that it's in my bones not my muscles. He then asked me if I had taken the Claritin that they told me to take. Time for my "Transfer Button." Sometimes I feel like we need a transfer button, so the doctor can feel what we're feeling. I just needed that button that day to push and say, "Here! Feel this! Does this feel like something you'd take a Claritin for?" So I responded to his question, "Yes, I took it for 3 days just like you said." He then asked, "Well, did you notice a difference?" I replied, "I wouldn't know. I took the medicine just like he instructed. So I'm not sure what it's like to not have the medicine inside me when I have these symptoms, but I'm trying to tell you now that it's still pretty bad even when I take the medicine. Do you have something stronger then a Claritin I could take? Like a pain pill for example. I have several of those on my window sill? Could I take one of those? How about Benadryl, that might put me to sleep for a few hours of relief. It's an allergy medicine."

At the time, this was a serious conversation, but today I can laugh at it. I have received some relief the next few chemo rounds by him suggesting I keep taking more of my steroid pills those first three days to help with the pain and it has. But I'm still waiting for someone to invent the "Transfer Button," and I will never look at Claritin the same way again.