Well, the Tuesday walk around the Loose Valley went very well, it was so nice to be back Linton Walking again. I was a bit knackered by the end of the walk but a reviving glass of white courtesy of David & Christine Hill soon sorted that out. Good to see such a decent turnout, too, 21 folk.
My haemoglobin count is still stable in the high 80s, so no blood transfusion is required this week, for the third consecutive week.
On Monday (yesterday, 30 June) I reported to the Chartwell Suite at Maidstone hospital, a delightful place with really friendly and competent staff. I was given an explanation of the ins and outs of the new chemo. I had been expecting to start it there and then, but instead I did have an intravenous drip of Rituximab, (four hours) and then two bags of pills and syringes, as follows:
- cyclophosphamide, take two lots of four pills per day for five days.
- an anti-nausea drug, metoclopramide, three pills per day for five days
- Omepazole, a tablet to prevent indigestion, 1 per day each morning.
- Filgrastim, a steroid you inject yourself with, twice a week.
- paracetomol, for use as required.
Quite a lot to take on board, I had to write it all down and very nearly started a spreadsheet!
I haven't given links again for these drugs, but if you are interested, Wikipedia has them all.
With the Filgrastim you are supposed to inject it into your abdominal tissue .. but when it came to that, I was unaccountably not keen to stab myself with a needle so Sue, who had no qualms at all, did it for me. I suspect she quite enjoyed it .. for someone as squeamish as I am, this has beena difficult few months! Must be well into three figures by now, the needle-stabbing events. Although the most painful part of all - so far - has been removing all the surgical tape they plaster on afterwards!
Cyclophosphamide is a drug to be reckoned with. I observe that its pages of (thankfully rarer) side effects include necrosis, decrease in testicle and bladder size, and "life-threatening failure of multiple organs such as heart, lungs, kidney, liver etc." With my luck, it would probably be an etc. that fails.. I took the first dose this morning, and so far so good, none of those have happened, but it is early days.
.. so, the first week of this chemo session now completed. Not a huge amount of fun, but not so bad either. Despite the anti-nausea pills I still felt a bit sick as the week went on, but was only actually sick once. One peculiar thing was that on day 2 I found I had put on a kilo in weight, and on day 3 another kilo! What was going on? It seemed to be fluid retention. My ankles swelled up, so had to wear sandals, and on days 4 and 5 I had to pee about hourly, and started to lose it all again .. by the middle of the week following, I was back close to normal weight.
Now here we are on Monday 14 July and I feel pretty much exactly as I did before the chemo. My haemoglobin is still stable around 86-90, hopefully the chemo will mean it increases in due course. I will advise any changes, here.
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