Rashes, Rashes Go Away
Originally published at bcvsbc.blogspot.com on 06/01/18
I am over all the rashes from different medications! Before the cancer diagnosis I rarely took medication so allergies to drugs were unknown to me. Since cancer it seems everything I am prescribed I am allergic to. Needless to say my level of frustration is at a 12 out of 10.
The rash that started on Monday has gotten worse and is extremely painful. Like every ear infection your kid gets it starts at night, on a holiday weekend, and my rash followed this same plan. I talked to two advice nurses, an emergency room doctor, and an on call oncologist in 48 hours. Each gave the same advice, take benadryl. Each time I talked to a different medical person they upped the amount and frequency the benadryl should be taken. By Wednesday I was taking 50 mg of benadryl every 4 hours. Easy way to describe where I was at is a catatonic state and in the end no change in the rash. I was (and still am) miserable, and exhausted, because though benadryl makes you drowsy it doesn't make you fall asleep.
Yesterday I had scheduled appointments with the plastic surgeon and a chemo orientation class. I see the irony in a chemo orientation class after I already had chemo, imagine me shrugging my shoulders with my hands raised up. My mom wanted me to cancel the appointments because I was a complete zombie, but I refused. There is almost nothing to look forward to in my life these days. Behind each turn is a door to another doctor, another procedure, another poke, another prod, another chance to be told they found something else. However, the plastic surgeons office is my fun place. It is the only thing in my life that is helping me regain a small part of me. I feel so little like a woman, like the me I used to be, and he is helping me get a small portion of that back. It is going to take a whole hell of a lot to get me to miss one of those appointments.
The plastic surgeon is awesome and he says my incisions are healing great. Most likely I will be able to wear a sports bra soon and remove the corset I have been in for five weeks. Something else to look forward to soon! I got another fill in my expanders. For those keeping count that is number 3. Because of my small frame (something I never thought I had) and my lack of body fat (not something I would have ever claimed) I will probably only get about 6 fills. Any more than that would most likely be too much for my body in size and stretching. That means I am half way done with the expanding part. This is both exciting and scary because it means we are getting closer to planning another surgery even though it will be further down the road due to chemo.
We had about two hours from that appointment and the chemo class so I decided we were going to try to talk to someone in the infusion center to get SOMETHING to help me. It was lunchtime but I got a janitor to bust in the doors and bring a nurse out to me. Thankfully she took one look at me and decided to help. She called the on call oncologist, who had no openings, but recommended that I see an adult medicine doctor. There were no openings with adult medicine but the nurse got them to agree to put me on a will call schedule if I was willing to sit in the waiting room and wait.
I am only posting the pictures of my face. You can all imagine it on my neck, shoulders, chest and back on your own.
It took over three hours but I finally got to see the doctor. He was brutally honest and explained he didn't know if he would be able to help me, the best doctor for the job was an oncologist but that wasn't an option for me. After he looked at me he said he was originally going to prescribe me a big shot of steroids in my butt but after seeing my face, neck, shoulders and chest he didn't think it was an allergic reaction, like hives, but an allergic reaction in the form of acne. If you give steroids to acne it makes it worse. Also, since he didn't know what it could be he researched all the medicine I was taking and the chemo combo I was given and felt it was most likely from the pre-chemo drugs. Again, he wasn't sure what to do and didn't want to give me something to make it worse or false hope. The best option was to take pictures and send it to a buddy of his that was a dermatologist. I figured I was getting the blow off and wouldn't hear from the guy again but by the time we had walked from his office to the car he called me. His friend said I should start taking an antibiotic twice a day. It has only been 24 hours and there has been no change. Not true, it is itching more today than yesterday.
In all the appointments, research, and information given at chemo it was never mentioned to me that I could end up with raging puberty like acne. Plus if they had mentioned that I would have loved to have been told that it would introduce itself by intense heat induced pain followed by burning bumps that itch. I didn't have acne like this growing up, so perhaps I am just naive, but it is not like I remember any acne I had before.
So what in the world could the silver lining be from this side effect? Nothing obvious to me so I have been researching for days. I found a study today that showed that patients that had acne like allergic reactions versus measles like allergic reactions to chemo had higher success rates of killing off cancer cells more efficiently. I told my friend Miranda that this is what I am holding close to my heart right now because if this is wrong it means I am slowly turning into a teenage boy and I am against that...adamantly against that. Her analogy was that I am a caterpillar growing into a butterfly. I desperately hope that is true. Though truthfully I told her it could mean I end up a moth in the end but like a true friend she decried that with science; apple doesn't have a moth emoji so it is impossible.
Until the medicine starts to work, or I get to actually speak with or see my oncologist, I will continue to attempt to not scratch my face. All I need is scars covering every inch this rash is touching when I am finished with these treatments.