Tag: Medication

Addendum to So.Many.Pills

My last post (I Didn’t Expect THAT: So.Many.Pills) was about the overwhelming number of medications associated with cancer treatment, particularly for someone not used to taking pills. But this topic deserves a closer look…

If I had to choose one of the most frightening aspects of cancer treatment, it would be side effects. This is not like popping an aspirin for a headache. These are medications that can take a heavy toll. One of my greatest sources of anxiety was deciding whether to take a pill or try to “tough it out”.

After surgery, I was given a generic form of something approximating Norco. Some people jokingly commented that this was a “perk” of treatment, but I had read the insert that came with the medication and wanted nothing to do with it. The only reason that I took it (a single half dose) was that by the evening I had a horrible headache, more painful than anything at the surgery site and probably due to a combination of the anesthesia and not being able to drink coffee that morning.

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Just…no.

It was a miserable night, since the half dose didn’t do much and I tossed in bed, googling interactions between my pill and ibuprofin, which is what I really wanted to take but hadn’t due to potential bleeding issues. At about 5am, satisfied that enough time had passed from my half dose of pain reliever, I took the ibuprofin and finally got some sleep. Wish I’d taken it first instead of the “oooo-you’re-so-lucky” Norco.

Nausea from chemo was another terrifying thought. The nurses had warned me not to risk it; if I started to feel queasy, take anti-nausea meds. Once vomiting sets in, I was told, it was hard to stop. Of course, the side effects associated with the meds were rather extensive and just reading the label made me anxious. There were two different meds and the idea was this: take the first one (ondonsetron) and then if I need a booster in four hours, take the second one (prochlorperazine). And then alternate like that every four hours, if necessary.

Sounds reasonable, except that a couple of nights after my first infusion I mixed up the pills and ended up taking prochlorperazine first. Prochlorperazine is an anti-psychotic (I guess, with anti-nausea properties?) and it was responsible for one of the roughest nights of my life. It was that night that I swore I’d pierced the veil between this world and the next and decided that death was a fair alternative to what I was feeling.

Somehow, I survived those first nights, but I wasn’t keen to go through that again.

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Not a perfect solution, but better than the alternatives.

I live in a state that has legalized cannabis, and was sent a shipment of CBD cookies by one of my brothers who had used them to control nausea from migraines. I was encouraged to try them since I was told CBD didn’t have side effects. Of course, as I mentioned in the previous post, it also didn’t have clear dosing guidelines. I mean, this was a crumbly cookie – how do you dose that? My brother said something like, “I take a couple when I get a migraine.” My brother is also 6’3″. I figured I’d start with one.

Shortly after that, I fell into a weird sleep from which, an hour later, I woke with a gasp because I thought I’d stopped breathing. Mmmm, probably not the right dose for me. Four hours after I’d consumed the cookie I needed to pick up my son from school. I wasn’t high, of course, but I wasn’t feeling normal either. I made it there and back alive. It was at that point that I realized having to play mom while going through cancer treatment just plain sucked, but I digress…

Eventually I worked out a dose, about 1/5 to 1/4 of a cookie, which was 20-25 mg of CBD. This was a game-changer for me and I gratefully relied on CBD for the remainder of my treatment. Yes, I truly disliked the taste, and with the lining of my GI tract gone, eating a cookie was not first on my list but being able to calm my nausea without side effects was well worth it. It probably helped my anxiety too.

What it would have been like to go through treatment without being so fearful of what the medications were doing to me? Anxiety always got the best of me. As noted in my last post, getting to the point where I could limit the number of medications I took was key in helping me get through this experience.

While the physical effects were rough, the psychological effects were what magnified the discomfort, and that had to do with feeling so far out of my element. None of this was close to normal. Of course, my normal is not needing medications. That wasn’t happening with cancer, but once I figured out what was what and how much I could handle, treatment became more manageable.

I Didn’t Expect THAT: So.Many.Pills

I figured that there would be a lot of medication involved with cancer treatment. I just didn’t realize it would be THIS much.

I am not a big pill-taker. Besides vitamins here and there, the only thing I’d taken with any frequency had been ibuprofin, and that was only for menstrual cramps and knee pain. But then came breast cancer.

First there was Xanax, so that anxiety from my diagnosis wouldn’t cause me to lose too much weight before starting chemo. Then there were meds post-surgery: I took half a pill of generic Vicodin before switching to ibuprofin, fearful of taking anything for too long. But with chemo, I needed steroids for before/during/after to get me through the infusion’s worst effects. Then there was the chemo itself, and additional IV drugs to prevent an immediate reaction. The day after each infusion, I went in for an injection (Neulasta) to help bring my white blood cell count back up.

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Some of my medications. Just looking at them made me feel sicker!

There were drugs to help deal with side effects. And then other drugs to handle the side effects of those drugs. I had more pills with my name on it than I’d ever had in my life. It was terrifying to me. I’d gone from being a remarkably healthy 50-something to (what felt to me like) a seriously ill patient with a life threatening disease.

In all honesty, most of these drugs I didn’t even take. While I did need the Xanax, I worked hard to reduced the dose until I parted with it completely. In its place, I meditated. After the first infusion and some unfortunate confusion regarding which anti-nausea pill to take first, resulting in one of the roughest nights of my life, I switched to CBD (cannabidiol) oil to prevent vomiting. Initially this required experimentation, as research in the area is relatively young due to an evolving legal landscape, resulting in lack of reliable dosing guidelines. But once I got that down, CBD eliminated the need for a myriad other medications because it didn’t have side effects.

Even the Claritin, which I was told to take for bone pain commonly associated with the Neulasta shots, was unnecessary. I took it for a while until I realized that I wasn’t experiencing significant pain and could do without it.

Limiting medications that weren’t completely necessary didn’t have negative physical effects and, even better, benefited me psychologically. I was constantly striving for normality, and that doesn’t come easily with cancer treatment. Pill-popping was an unfamiliar concept for me, so getting back to where I felt comfortable, taking as few medications as I could safely tolerate, was critical.

Unfortunately, I’m not quite done yet. The toughest part is over, but the last chapter of  my pill-taking experience includes a decade of the estradiol-blocking drug Tamoxifen. It’s a single pill I have to take on a daily basis to reduce the chances of cancer recurrence, and I deal by looking at it as an excuse to hydrate before getting out of bed every morning. Drink a bunch of water and, oh, slip that pill in there too.

I wish I didn’t even have to take the Tamoxifen. But it is what it is. I’m looking forward to the day when I can be completely pill-free, and trying to appreciate that after everything I’ve been through, there’s only one medication left.