Oh how I fought against this one. Methotrexate is the drug that they injected directly into my spine. I was so upset when they told me about it that I cried all day, I tried to justify to my family why I shouldn’t have to do this. It wasn’t fair! I was so terrified. Having cancer is degrading and demoralizing because your choice becomes the treatment your doctor says you have to have to survive or death. Obviously it’s completely counterintuitive to choose death over the possibility of survival. I had to survive for Addy.

So into the hospital I go again. This time all of the chemo is delivered through IV except for the methotrexate. The doctor who had done my bone marrow biopsy walks in with another nurse. An intense feeling of dread comes over me. I tell them I need drugs or I’m not doing this. So they give me dilaudid and Ativan. I lay down on my hospital bed and pull my tank top up and curl into a fetal position and look at my dad. As soon as we make eye contact he says “stop! She needs more drugs” so they actually did stop and gave me more drugs, we wait a couple more minutes and they begin the procedure. Thanks to my dad speaking up I felt nothing except kind of a weird sensation. When they do this procedure they take a large syringe with a long needle and remove some spinal fluid and replace it with the methotrexate. Afterwards you are supposed to stay laying down for a few hours so that the fluid goes to your brain. They monitor you closely for headaches or any other adverse reactions. This ritual continued for the next 5 months every 16 days I would have to go in for chemo and a spinal tap of methotrexate. It was not fun but my advice to anyone is make sure you ask for drugs to help you through it. Going through all this is and enough don’t make it harder by suffering through painful procedures, it is your doctors job to keep you comfortable.