In January of 2022, my husband was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma. We have gone through the past three months of chemo together, and we still somehow like each other, which I will count as a huge win. As I have spent the past few months as a chemo wife, there are a few things I have learned.
Always have blow pops & hard candy on hand on chemo days.
As my husband would start receiving medicine through his medi-port, he would always have weird tastes in his mouth. From a rubber tire taste to the grossest saline you can imagine. The one thing that helped him was to have candy to suck on so he wouldn’t taste all of the gross medicine.
You are never, ever too hydrated.
Levels of my husband’s hydration varied on chemo days, and the one thing we noticed was the more water in his system, the better he handled treatment. A friend of ours who also went through treatment told my husband to “drink until you feel like your eyes are going to float away.” We have said that to ourselves multiple times over the past few months.
Oncologist Nurses are Your Best Friends
I will never deny, that there is a special gold-plated set of chairs in heaven for our oncologist nurses. If you need to know anything about your cancer treatment, the nurses know. If by chance they don’t, they will do everything in their power to find out the answer you need.
Every treatment, we look forward to visiting with our nurses, they have a way of making treatment days bearable.
Take lots of deep breaths
Every single cancer journey is different. Cancer is hard on the patient and their caregiver(s). The one thing that has helped me as a forever recovering over-planner, type A is to take a lot of deep breaths. I remind myself that we will be ok … things might suck for a while, but we will continue moving forward, listening to our medical team and remembering we can only deal with today and what is in front of us.
