I’ve been counselled about a lot of potential side effects
from radiation and chemotherapy but the one thing no one talked about was how much
I would pee!!
 |
| "Manneken Pis" translates from Dutch as "Little man Pee". It is a famous bronze statue in Brussels. (Photo by: Myrabella / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0) |
Now, I’m not talking little tinkles every hour, I’m talking
full-on full bladder releases.
I could water an entire farmer’s field.
At first, I thought this was because I have an IV bag of the
chemo drug fluorourcil (5-FU) attached to me 24 hours a day providing a
steady flow of the prescribed 0.1 ml of fluid every 20.8 seconds.
The first night I slept with the IV and pump I got up to go
to the bathroom four times.
One of the risks of some chemotherapy drugs, in my case mitomycin,
is renal failure, which is compounded by all of my HIV medications. I
don’t usually drink a lot of fluids but I am consciously making an effort to
drink more water to help flush the kidneys and that is probably the real reason
for the frequent trips to the little boy’s room.
In addition to drinking more fluids to flush my body of
chemo drugs I also have to prepare for my radiation treatment by controlling my
fluid intake.
For radiation treatment to the pelvic lymph nodes my bladder
needs to be the same size for each treatment, “comfortably full” they call it. There is nothing comfortable about
a full bladder.
One hour before treatment, I have to empty my bladder
(urinate) completely then … drink 500 ml (2 cups) of water to fill the bladder
and hold it in until after treatment. This is usually not that bad if
everything is on schedule.
Yesterday, when I arrived to check-in, the board with the
anticipated wait-times showed that my radiation unit was out of service. Apparently
the computers were offline and all of the units were out of service. The
computers had just come back online and the unit was now officially an hour
behind schedule. I was going to have to start over.
Having a full bladder ensures that all of the internal
organs and other bits are always in the same place for each treatment. Before
the treatment begins the technicians x-ray the pelvic area to make sure
everything is where it should be. If my bladder is not full I cannot receive
the radiation treatment.
Thankfully, after a slight delay, they were able to squeeze
me in. I held it in a little longer.
I spent most of my quiet time on the treatment table
thinking about not thinking about how much I have to pee and visualizing, like
an athlete, how quickly I could pull my pants up, grab my IV bag and pump, coat
and put on my glasses and run across the hall to my favourite watering hole, hoping it’s not in use.
References
List of exclamations
by Robin
Wikipedia
Manneken Pis
HoHoHo Yellow Snow
agame.com
agame.com
Kidney damage and
chemotherapy
Canadian Cancer Society
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