A New Day, A New Doctor

Saturday was an eventful day for Ashley. It started off with her being up, awake, and alert for a majorirty of the day. for some of you this may seem insignificant, but for Ashley this was huge. Saturday marked the third day after her first day a chemo, which is when you should start to feel better as your body is alomst done clearing the chemo drugs.

I knew something was different about today, because I woke up to the smell of aju beef and dipping sauce. I walked out of our bedroom, expecting to see Ashley either asleep at on of the dinig room chairs, or asleep on the couch, but she was not. She greeted me with a, hello honey and said I left the stuff out to make the sandwiches, I know your hungry. She was right.

While Ashley was talking on the phone with her mom and dad and later with her friend Meg on skype, I cleaned the apartment and decided to ask ashley if she wanted to go on a date to see the green latern? She said yes. After I finished cleaning I stopped by the movie theater to pick up the tickets for one of the night showings.

Somewhere around an hour and a half into the movie Ashley leaned over to me and said, "my tounge is tight and I cannot control it, and my hand is starting to feel that way too." I decided at the moment it was time to go. We rushed to Henry Ford Macomb Hospital ER and got her admitted asap. Luckily the ER was only five minutes from the movie theater, but in that short amount of time her hand had become worse. the ER doctors asked Ashley what meds she has taken? Because of her tounge tetanus, it was hard for the doctors to understand what Ashley was saying, so I spoke up. "She took augmentin for her ear infection and compazine for anti nausea," I said. the doctors face light up and he side, we found our culprit. Its the compazine.

He explained to us that compazine has a known side effect, not an allergy, in some people to cause a contraction of the tounge and hand muscles. I told him that this is the third day shes taken this medication, and asked him why this side effect had not shown up already. He said usually the side effect shows up within one day of taking it. I told him that the past couple of nights shes be complaining of jitters and feeling like shes a crack addict. He said, its probably all related. Not to bore you all with the details, but basically her body was metabolizing the drug fast enough that there drug wasn't around long enough to produce the full effect; however; its cumulation was enough to produce the side effect.

The nurse come over, while the doctor was explaining things to me in more detail, and started her on an IV and gave her benadryl through the IV. With in minutes her spastic contrations were gone and she was feeling a little cold and drowsy. A different nurse gave her a blanet to keep her warm and we just waited for thirty minutes or so to make sure the drugs had taken full effect. After they discharged us, we headed back home so she could get some sleep. She will probably be a little drowsy for the next day or so, because she need to take benadryl for the next day while her body clears the rest of the compazine out of her system. In the upcoming days it will be intersting to see if her self proclaimed crack addict feeling is gone. One thing we do know, is Zofran is the way to go from here on out.