Complications

At the end of the first week of March, I started my chemotherapy regimen. Nervous is an understatement. Never in a million years did I think I would willingly pump poison into my body—but there I was. I did my best to create a positive environment in both my mind and body as I prepared to receive treatment.

I was given a dose of Zofran to prevent nausea and then began the first of four 22-hour bags of chemotherapy drugs.

I felt a little off. Sleepy. Puffy from all the fluids. But that was about the extent of it. With each bag change, I got another dose of Zofran and felt extremely grateful that I wasn’t experiencing any severe symptoms.

Chemo and fluid bags

Then came the immunotherapy drug, Rituximab, on the fifth and final day. I had been warned that this medication often elicits the most frequent and severe reactions, so I went into it feeling understandably nervous.

Ideally, vitals are checked every 30 minutes during administration, and if all goes well, the drip speed is gradually increased until it reaches the desired rate. In a perfect scenario, this only takes a few hours—timed perfectly for my PET scan scheduled that afternoon.

This is where things took a turn for the worse. Almost immediately, I developed a sore throat, body aches, and chills. The PA was called in, and the nurses decided to keep the drip at the slowest possible rate to avoid overwhelming my body, which was clearly reacting.

Unfortunately, this meant that by the time I needed to be transferred to radiology for my PET scan, I was only halfway through the dose. It had to be paused during the two-hour scan process.

When I was reconnected to the drip, my body had somewhat adjusted to the drug and the reaction wasn't as intense—though I still didn’t feel great. A few hours later, I completed the bag. I had officially finished my first round of chemotherapy.

The PAs and oncologist on duty make daily rounds, and I was expected to go "home" the next day. There was just one problem—I still had a chest tube, which was continuing to drain fluid from my chest. In the week and a half since it had been inserted, the drainage rate hadn’t slowed enough to meet the criteria for removal, and daily chest X-rays still showed fluid accumulation.

I was given two options: stay another night to see if the drainage would drop, or have a small procedure to insert a Pleurex tube—a smaller tube that could be drained at home. I opted to stay one more night. Lucky I did.

That night, I had my first bout of nausea. I still don’t know if it was from the chemo or the Thai food I’d been craving. Either way, it was the domino that triggered a whole onslaught of symptoms that kept me in the hospital for another week and a half.

After vomiting, my nurse performed an orthostatic test, which I immediately failed—my blood pressure plummeted, and I nearly fainted. The charge nurse rushed in and tilted my bed so my feet were above my head. Thus began the worst night of my life in the hospital.

It was already past 10 p.m. when it started, and for the rest of the night, I had what felt like a constant stream of visitors. Labs, EKGs, a cardiologist performing an echocardiogram, a chest X-ray, another echo, more labs. By morning, I was ragged and exhausted.

Though I felt a bit better the next morning, I was still on bed rest due to the previous night's near-fainting episode. And with chemo’s impact on my kidneys, I had to use the bathroom constantly—but only with help from a nurse or CNA to clip a gait belt around my waist and walk me the eight steps to the toilet. Extremely frustrating for a hyper-independent person like me.

Just as I was dozing off in the late morning, the stream of visitors resumed—this time, it was the department heads: oncologist, cardiologist, thoracic surgeon, pulmonologist, and, most alarmingly, the ICU’s head doctor.

I had been experiencing a rapid heart rate (120–140 bpm), and imaging revealed fluid around my heart—something called tamponade. They also spotted a blood clot near the end of my PICC line. This was serious enough to call in a doctor from the ECMO team to obtain consent for inserting catheters through my groin for life support, should things deteriorate.

I responded, “That sounds horrible,” and did not give my consent.

It all felt surreal. Yes, I didn’t feel great—but I didn’t feel like I belonged in the ICU. While my medical team prepared for worst-case scenarios, I was just trying to will my body back into some kind of regulated state.

But I couldn’t will my heart to slow down. In addition to the PICC line, I now had a peripheral IV pumping blood thinners for the clot and was hooked up to a heart rate monitor.

Down in the ICU, I tried to find a silver lining—the beds were much more comfortable! But that was about it. Not long after arriving, I was asked to consent to an arterial (A) line for continuous blood pressure and heart rate monitoring. I hesitated, but ultimately signed. I wish I hadn’t.

Hanging out in the ICU

The doctor attempted to insert the A line into my left wrist while distracting me with questions about my ballet background. It took much longer than expected, and I was shocked by how much blood was involved. When it was finally done, my wrist hurt like hell—and I had yet another tube coming out of my body.

Hours later, I woke to my nurse gently manipulating my tender wrist. The line had failed.

Soon after, a different PA arrived and began prepping my right wrist. If the first time sucked, the second was worse because I knew exactly how much it would hurt. He tried for 30 minutes before giving up. I was equal parts enraged and relieved.

I told my nurse I didn’t want to try again. She agreed and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my left arm, programmed to check every 20 minutes. I silently wished they’d started with that.

Bruised wrist following A line insertion

The next morning, I asked why my body was reacting like this. The team suspected the chemo was inflaming my large tumor, putting pressure on my heart. Alarming, yes—but maybe that meant it was working?

They prescribed another course of steroids and mentioned radiation as a possible option. That was a full-body no from me.

The steroids worked wonders. I felt amazing—so much so that I even managed some invoicing for work. The team agreed I was stable enough to be downgraded to the Progressive Care Unit (PCU).

Early the next morning, when a bed became available, I was transferred. I was still on oxygen and hooked up to heart and blood pressure monitors. While I technically wasn’t on bed rest, I still needed help getting to the bathroom. I spent three days there, focusing hard on my breathing to try to bring my heart rate down.

My biggest struggle at this point was the lack of sleep. I hadn’t been sleeping much the month or so before I went into the hospital, and I surely wasn’t sleeping soundly there. Between the lack of natural light, the onslaught of artificial lights and beeping, especially at night, and the minimum of two nurse and CNA visits even on a good night for vital checks and lab draws, it is damn near impossible to get a good night’s sleep.

By this time I was at my wit’s end and broke down to my PA during rounds, tearfully asking, “How am I supposed to get better if I’m not sleeping?” I was completely exhausted. Fortunately, she agreed to order minimal nighttime visits for me and upped my melatonin dosage to 6 mg—a small win.

Finally, I was transferred back upstairs to the BMT oncology unit.

But the ordeal wasn’t over—I still had the chest tube. By this point, I was on my 13th atrium. If you're counting, that’s about 26 liters of fluid drained in under three weeks—and it was still going. If I wanted to go home, I had to agree to the Pleurex procedure.

After one last chest X-ray, I was scheduled with interventional radiology the next afternoon. I was nervous again, but once the fentanyl hit, time and consciousness ceased to exist. One minute I was moaning as they removed my chest tube; the next, I was back in bed, a small capped tube now protruding from my chest.

The next day, the pulmonology team trained Jordan on how to drain the tube at home, and the nurses showed him how to flush my PICC line with heparin to prevent the clot from worsening. We were stocked up with all the necessary supplies.

Finally, I packed up my chaotic assortment of belongings and went home.

I had entered the hospital on February 27 in Montana. I was discharged on March 21 in Colorado. I had hardly begun to process the life-altering changes that had occurred over those three weeks.