Chemo

I got To Christie Hospital for my 09:30am appointment. We saw Dr Lorrigan at 10am. We had a more frank discussion than Wednesday. Basically, I am in a war with this cancer and the final result may not be postive.

So treatment set for 12:30pm. Come 12:30 and the medicine was not ready. Apparently the cocktail of drugs which make up the chemo are prepared off site, in Burnage. My intravenous bag had not been delivered. I was not alone. Most of the people there were due to start their treatment at 9:30am and were still waiting.

Anyway, my chemo bag appeared 4pm, by which time most everyone else had also go theirs. First was a talk about precautions for Chemo. E.g.:

• no salads (can't be sure is it is fully clean - cooked foods only);
• full cream milk not skimmed, to counter the tendency to lose weight;
• keep a digital thermometer to hand and check temperature at slightest sign of fever then immediately contact hospital if in excess of 37.5C.

We also discussed support mechanisms, so they have refered me to the Distric Nurse. They said they are best for medical and pain relief advice, whereas MacMillan is more geared to benefits advice, which is important to some but not my main concern.

Then I went on the drip. I could feel it stinging as it went in, so they slowed the drip to reduce the pain. That meant a 2 hour session rather the the hoped for half an hour. (Most chemo drips are painless as they go in, but some people react to this particular one.) That was fun. There was a dozen of us patients, plus hangers on. I was the youngest and we were all facing our personal battles.

We finished the day at Christie with a free NHS meal, for all four of us.