First Taste of Chemo=First (but not last) Ambulance Ride

They set me up for the induction chemo by sending me to the operating room to get a central line put in.  This was an interesting little procedure.  I was awake the whole time.  They numb the area with lidocaine and make an incision at the top of your chest.  They insert a line that goes down near your heart.  It was a weird sensation being able to feel it going in. I had some pain after the procedure as your body has to get used to this small tube in it. It was mainly a sore feeling. Next, it was time for the little black bag.  The way UAMS does induction chemo is they give you a nuclear bomb chemo cocktail called VDT-PACE.  Each letter stands for a type of chemo.  I went in and they packed up a little black bag that I would wear for a week straight.  The chemo would be pumped into my body 24/7.  I would sleep with it, bathe with it, etc.  The bag was hooked up to me on a Monday and would be detached on Friday.  Each day that week, I would go to infusion and they would swap out the empty bags inside and give me full ones.  I remember I HATED sleeping with that bag.  The sound of the pump was constant and would keep me up at night.  I can still hear it to this day. I also could only take shallow baths.  Throughout the week, I kept waiting to feel awful but I felt pretty normal.  I was actually starting to think I was a pretty tough cookie to have all this chemo and still be able to function so well!  I really thought I was just a star cancer patient at this point.  But then everything came crashing down and I had a very rude awakening.  It was Friday and I had just gotten off the phone with my high school girls, boasting to them about how I had survived the chemo bag with little side effects.  After hanging up with them, I started feeling a bit dizzy and very fatigued.  I turned in early.  I woke up in the middle of the night with a raging fever.  It kept getting higher and higher to the point I was no longer coherent or able to walk.  My mom called the emergency number and they told her to get me to infusion as soon as they opened.  My mom wheeled me out to the car in a wheelchair we brought with us and got me to the cancer institute.  She wasn’t able to come inside (covid) so she handed me off and they took me up to infusion in a wheelchair.  They rushed me back and took my vitals.  My fever was raging and my blood pressure was plummeting.  All I remember was one of my favorite nurses leaning over and saying “Corinne, I don’t want you to be alarmed, but we have called an ambulance and they are on their way to get you to the hospital.”  A few minutes later, the paramedics arrived, loaded me up on a stretcher, and rolled me out to the ambulance.  All I remember from the ambulance ride is they kept asking me questions.  In my mind I was answering but they kept saying I was “unresponsive.”  They declared me as septic and rolled me into the hospital.  There were a ton of people around me on the table and I was super cold and couldn’t stop shaking.  They were able to stabilize me and admitted me to the ICU.