Chemotherapy Begins

I’ve started chemotherapy.

The day before I was due to begin I was all over the place. I was fairly well briefed by the staff and some internet links as to what was involved but it’s still a trip into the unknown & I was finding that my normal powers of concentration had vanished & I was doing all sorts of stupid things and really making a mess of routine tasks.

A problem with our old Labrador really wasn’t helping either. She had recently developed a loss of bowel control and was frequently making a mess in the house. One such incident every few weeks we could cope with but now it was happening every couple of days & with my likely reduced resistence to infection caused by chemotherapy looming the problem was becoming much more serious.

So bright and early on Wednesday I picked up my overnight bag and got a taxi to the Christie arriving about ten o’clock and began the checks that are carried out before treatment begins.

The first thing is yet another blood test. I swear the whole thing is a cover operation for a nest of vampires, so much blood do they collect.

Now there’s a wait until the lab reports on the blood. The clinicians will not write your prescription for what are expensive medications until they are certain you are fit enough to have the treatment. About an hour later when the results came through there was a briefing from a doctor and I signed the consent forms and then was taken up to the ward.

A surprising good lunch was provided. A beautiful pork casserole with carrots and creamed potatoes preceded by a vegetable soup and followed by fruit crumble and custard. The carrots wer not cooked to death and, surprisingly for a hospital, salt was available. See! It’s not poison.

At “tea time” I chose cod in mushroom sauce followed by jelly and ice-cream. Once more it was beautifully cooked.

A lot of sitting around until mid-afternoon with occasional checks on pulse rate, temperature and BP then the treatment begins.

There are two anti-nausea and anti-vomitting infusions delivered intraveinously. One was steroids but I can’t remember what the second one was. Then came the first of the two chemotherapy treatments. This was a 30 minute infusion of Gemcitabine. This was followed up by some 16 hours of infusions of Cisplatin CT which is delivered from 4x4 hour bags each of which takes a bit longer than four hours and there’s usually about a ten minute gap while a nurse sets up the new bag.

Once the treatment begins your oral fluid intake is recorded and all your urine has to be collected in bottles. So when you need to go you unplug your drip from the mains, take your bottle in one hand and pull your unit behind you to the bathroom and because of the fluid from the drip and the amount you are encouraged to drink these trips are pretty frequent. On the return to your bed you have to remember to plug your unit in again or the batteries go flat. I forgot twice!

I didn’t bother going to bed that night as the steroids they fed me in tablet form at about 9pm kept me awake. Luckily I had taken “The Death Of Dalziel” with me and that kept me going through the night until I started dozing off at about six o’clock Thursday morning

Breakfast was rubbish. A choice of various cerials or toast which was cold.

My treatments finished about nine ‘clock, a final round of BP, temperature and so on, a final visit from the specialist chemo nurse with briefings on side-effects, diet and so on, some anti-nausea and anti sickness tablets to bring home with me & I’m on my way.

I got back here at about a quarter to eleven to find myself in the middle of our pet Labrador’s final hour.

The vet arrived shortly after me and put her down as I held her. Ann and the vet had had a long discussion that morning and agreed there was no other answer. A damned emotional day for us on top of everything else.

As for my condition after treatment, I was tired and had a couple of naps durinnng the afternoon and evening but apart from that I felt fine and after a stiff whisky I went to bed about my usual time and slept pretty well.

Ann has an old school friend staying with us and Jill is a great support. She is sharing the housework and providing a useful emotional support and a great distraction for us both so there is something in our lives besides my damned cancer.

As for today, I did feel a bit sick in the night and a little nauseus this morning but the meds have sorted that out. My legs are a little unsteady & my concentration is shot. Earlier on my throat was dry and I had a tickly cough but that seems to have gon.

I did go to Sale on the bus this morning and did most of the things I had planned but I grabbed a cab home rather than walking or using the bus & by about two this afternoon I was feeling shattered and slept for about half an hour.

It’s Ann who has the real problem in that she wants to be informed but doesn’t want it to dominate our lives which gives the problem of knowing how much we should talk bout it and how much is sheer self-indulgence on my part.