Tag Archives: hospital

Chemo round 2 (day 8)

As requested, a quick update. Yesterday was my first trip back to hospital, to get a second dose of one of the lovely cytotoxic drugs. Unlike last time it only took a few hours, and was carried out in the chemotherapy day unit. Despite being slanderously described as “the cancer farm” by one worried / frustrated wife, it was very comfortable and efficient. There were several rooms, each of which seeming to house ever more people plugged into beeping machinery all of which was going off at different intervals, yet the nurses were on the scene very quickly whenever it was my turn to be plugged / unplugged.

The tea was plentiful and hot, and they even managed to find some sandwiches left over so that I could have a second lunch. One side-effect of haveing a low red-blood count seems to be an insatiable desire for red meat and carbs, whereas I have no sweet tooth at all.

That’s all for now, I’m off on my daily constitutional down to the river.

Chemo 3

Only one drug infusion to go now, starts about 12 so I should be home this evening!

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At the moment I’m even mobile, as I don’t have my drip running at all. No comedy/tragedy to report from last night I’m afraid, just a regular pattern of sleeping and heading to the loo, then straight back to sleep again. How dull.

Having a desk to work procrastinate at is a real bonus though, very comfortable compared to bring stuck in bed all the time.

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Chemo day 2

I’m pretty lucky here in some ways, this was my view from thread hospital window this morning:

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Unfortunately this had to be taken fairly early, and I didn’t get much sleep. I sat up until 12 talking to the other two guys in the bay, one of whom then woke us up at 2 with uncontrollable shits. And again at 6, when it was time for the ward to come to life. I managed another snooze listening to BBC radio four (thanks guys) but lie-ins are a pipe dream around here.

A long drug infusion through the night made me feel a bit sick, but they gave me the magic drugs which worked wonders. Only side effects, temporarily I had veins a junkie would be proud of. Gone now though, even when this picture was taken they were fading 🙂

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Chemo blog 1

Right then. For those of you who haven’t heard, I had testicular cancer. It was fine, the hospital were very good and the tumour is all gone. Please don’t be upset if I haven’t told you personally, it’s kind of awkward. Now I’m back for a short course of chemotherapy to clear my system out and then it’ll all be over.

It turns out this mostly involves two things: sitting around waiting, and pissing. A lot. There’s 500 ml of saline going into my arm every hour, along with as much tea and water as I can manage so that my kidneys keep active. The food so far is fine, but don’t drink the coffee. Most importantly there is wifi.

Here are my first drugs on their way in:

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