Chemo, fever question & incision - I'm tired

[vlcarr]

I had my first chemo on 10/15 and today is the first day I've felt pretty good......

I know it's early to be tired already, but I've been so frustrated since my first treatment. The constant abdominal pain for a week was enough but this past Monday I started running a fever and I've posted the problems I'm having with my mastectomy incision.

They gave me antibiotics by IV on Wednesday and oral antibiotics for 10 days, but could find nothing in my bloodwork, urine, etc to indicate any infection. The only thing they think it could be is inflammation of my incision.

The incision area has been black since I took the steri strips off. I went to the surgeon's nurse pract yesterday and she pulled and cut off all the black area and she said just as she suspected there were sutures underneath that had not dissolved and she removed those. She said it did not look infected but some people's bodies reject them and they do not dissolve properly.

She put some Xeroform dressing on it and covered it with gauze, gave me some to take home and said to do this for a couple of days and it should clear up. I was still running a temp of 99.7 yesterday but so far today no fever!

I had a small reaction to the IV antibiotics and the dr wanted to stop it but I insisted on getting it, so they loaded me up with Benadryl by IV and slowed the drip and the rest of the treatment went fine. I really wanted to get that in my body.

Has anyone experienced fever during chemo and they could find no reason for it?

My next chemo is Wednesday and I'm so dreading it.

The weird thing is I didn't really have the metal taste in my mouth like most of you have mentioned. They said my hair would probably be falling out by now but that hasn't happened either.

I know I should be thankful but this rough start has gotten me down. I'm still on leave from work as I took off 6 weeks after my surgery. I'm supposed to be going back in a couple of weeks but if I feel the way I've felt with this round I'm not sure how much I can work.

I've read your posts that most of you only felt crappy for 3 or 4 days so I'm just down that my experience was not like that.

On a positive note, I started some physical therapy this week and they are doing Myofascial Release therapy which I think I'm really going to like (only some of it was painful) and will help with my range of motion and pain in the lymph node area.

Thank you all for listening to my tale of woe.....