Yesterday was scary

My first chemo and radiation day. I was so excited to start blasting this nastiness out of me. They called me to come in early to UPMC to access the Power Port which was really giving them a lot of trouble with the major swelling & bruising.. After a couple of tries and minimal pain, they did it! We started premedication. That took about an hour. I was in a private room with Alan. We had recliners, TV, snacks, soda.  All was well. They prepared to start first line of chemo. My nurse said she would not leave my side-she was about 2 feet from me.She told me to tell her ANY weird or strange sensation. About 3 minutes into the infusion, I started to feel some aching across my entire lumbar region-I didn't want to complain because you feel like a hypochondriac, and I had been lying in the chair for over an hour and just though it was aching. Well, it became progressively worse, I had to let my nurse know. She jumped up, stopped the drip, grabbed a syringe and withdrew all of the chemo drug that was in the tubing, called in other nurses, grabbed a steroid (solu-medrol or solu cortef-I'm not sure because I was beginning to black in and out by now.) I started to have severe chest pain radiationg over my entire chest and into my jaw. I was losing consciousness, they were calling in the Dr. and all other nurses. They were trying to get a pressure, I could hear them saying 40-I hope that was diastolic and not systolic, pulse was dropping along with oxygen saturation.Next thing I knew, Noga ambulance was in the room and two attendants were lifting me onto a cart to take me to the ER at Jameson. They took me out into the ambulance and were trying to stabilize me before pulling out of the lot. Poor Alan was so nervous he couldn't remember where he parked the car. He found it and pulled up behind the ambulance.They thought I was having an MI or some coronary artery spasm. They had me on the monitor, O2, gave me baby ASA to chew, and then nitroglycerine sublingually every five minutes. The EKG machine was right beside my head and it looked like NSR to me, I kept asking the paramedic and she said it looked good. She used to work on the mobile intensive care unit so I felt quite safe with her.After being checked out in ER, they agreed it was an allergic reaction to the chemo-now I can't take that drug. I can't start treatment until Monday now so another little bump in the road.That was quite disappointing to me. One of my nurses at Jameson was the husband of my Nuclear Med Tech from my scans I had done on Monday. What a small world. I was afraid to let the nurses in the ER remove the needle from the port because I wanted the nurses at cancer care to have their landmarks for the next insertion on Monday. So, I had the ER nurse call UPMC. She irrigated the tubing, capped it off and we ran back up to UPMC to get the needle removed, spoke with radiation ocologist again, back to chemo office again and then out of there. A V-E-R-Y long, stressful day. Of course, Alan wanted me to EAT, so as we were sitting in the restaurant, Dr. Wilson, my radiation oncologist called me. I just find it soo amazing his attentiveness to this case,. He really is a special guy. We came home, had our usual gang of well-wishers and phone calls to answer and we crashed. Your prayers worked, I'm still here, it takes more than that to get me down. We will try this all again Monday. Positive thoughts everyone and have a beautiful weekend, Linda