Friday and its Cycle 3 day of the Chemo Rechallenge. I get up early and take my morning meds including pre chemo steroids. All I can manage is buttered toast and soem hot water. I settle down to read more of Dante’s Divine Comedy and during the morning I read my way from Hell to Purgatory as the narrator and his guide Virgil wade through the the various levels of punishment and torture as they are imagined by Dante. At lunch time my partner and I eat beans on toast as I watch another winter Olympics ice hockey game. It is soon time to load up my chemo survival bag and get ready to Uber to the hospital.
I choose an ice hockey jersey to wear to Chemo as it offers warmth and access to my upper arms for the blood pressure measurements. The Uber arrives quickly and drops us off at the hospital with plenty of time to walk through the hospital to the cancer unit. I hand in my “dance card” to the receptionist and my partner and I go to the café to load up with drinks and chocolate to see us through what I know will be a longer session. We find a couple of chairs in the waiting room and settle in, me to reading more Dante and my partner to read and continue knitting my new jumper. A nurse appears, never a good sign when things are quiet and announces they are running an hour behind, which instantly makes my pre-emptive piss I’ve just had redundant. Back to Purgatory and the waiting. I finally get called at about quarter past four and find myself in chair 18 again. The team are short staffed and it takes time to get round to me and my initial blood pressure taking. Eventually the nurse appears to put my cannula in.
Before I can get going on the chemo I have to have pre chemo antihistamine and steroid injections via the cannula to stop me having another allergic reaction like last time. With the injections in there is to be a thirty minute wait before the chemo can start. Of course I read and wait. With the thirty minutes up the nurse returns and hooks up my bag of Yew tree gloop and gets me started on my chemo proper.
So I settle back to being chemo’d and reading. And so it goes for an hour until my machine beeps and calls the nurse to give me my last six minutes of saline. The session has been long and I have packed my survival bag away not having touched the can of Coke or any chocolate. Mostly from fear of needing a piss over this long session. A new nurse takes out my cannula, attached a fluffy cloud to the back of my hand and pissed off. I assumed that was it for me so got myself together and headed to the toilet for a well earned piss. My partner and I walk over to the nearby hotel and I order an Uber and by luck one is there already having just dropped off a punter to the hotel. The adjacent rugby ground is already open for the evening match.
On getting home we eat risotto for tea and slip into the evening of favourite TV, however my partner suddenly gets an attack of diarrhoea and it leads to vomiting as well, clearly she has gone down with something like norovirus. So a difficult night starts for my partner, all I can do is provide fresh water, warm cushions and encouragement. I do get an early Tesco delivery booked in so we can deal with shopping over the weekend. So it is a fitful night as I listen out for my partner as she copes through the night.
Saturday and I am up to see how my partner is. Dioralyte is the first thing to do and then I fix my breakfast so I can take my meds and post chemo steroids. There is time to watch some Winter Olympics and our mixed curling team continue to win. I clear the kitchen and then start to draft the blog while watching firstly the men’s down hill and then a midday football match. Its a day that leads onto two international rugby matches, with brief breaks for reading and eating. I shall not be going to the theatre tonight while my partner is ill so hopefully my eldest daughter can find someone to go with.
By the end of the day my brother in law and one of my nieces went to the theatre in I and my partners place so the tickets did not go to waste. To counter my loss of taste due to chemo I order Pirri Pirri chicken and watch a terrible film before the football highlights. In a final burst if energy I clear the kitchen and then make changes to the Tesco order for tomorrow. I take my night meds and the last of the chemo steroids and tidy up the draft blog before checking on my partner who is still recovering from her norovirus attack, and taking myself to bed. Tomorrow it will be time to take stock and see try to keep the resting and recovery going on.
