The First Chemotherapy Session

 

Thursday June 25 2020 First Chemotherapy session

The consultant had managed to book me a chair for a short session of chemo. Normally I would have two drugs but because of the lack of space and time this week I would only have the one drug and that would take about half an hour or so to go through. She wanted me to start the treatment as soon as possible.

The room had about 4 chairs in it and a nurses station that led to another large room with another 4 chairs. It looked like a surreal hair dressing salon where instead of hair driers we were attached to drips, Bizarre!  It was a chatty, friendly and relaxed atmosphere. Lots of nurses rolling around on their wheeled chairs to deliver the drugs to the patients. Opening drawers full of syringes and preparing the cocktails of drugs for each patient. Each individual item wrapped in paper or cellophane. There was an element of opening of presents in there somewhere. Lots of putting on and binning new and used plastic aprons and face masks. There was quite a turn over of patients.

I was given a pill to help the nausea and 4 tiny steroid pills as well before starting the treatment. Then they put a cannula in. It is a needle that is held in place with some plasters with various tubes coming out of it . They attach the saline solution to one of the tubes and the chemotherapy drug to the other tube. The saline dripping through continually keeps the vein open all the time. Luckily needles don't bother me and the nurse did say “I had lovely veins”. I was read out all the possible side effects of the drug and told to tell a nurse if I felt at all unwell or sick. I was told that some people have all of them, some people have some of them and some have very few side effects, you just don't know how your body is going to react to this drug.

Luckily I had managed to finish all my recording and mixing projects before my first treatment. I only had one more song to record and a one minute lock down video to make. I thought I might be able to complete those in a weeks time.

After the steroids had worn off I took paracetamol and those tiny metoclopramide pills for nausea.

My friend had come to stay and look after me and after a few times of haphazardly forgetting to take pain killers I thought to set an alarm at 12.30am 6.30am 12.30 pm and 6.30 pm. It was a good system and has worked ever since. I managed my swollen belly much better and slept half sitting up which is better for my lungs. Perhaps my feeling better had to do with my coming to terms with what was happening to my body and why, and learning to manage the pain relief better. It also has to do with the fact that I had started the treatment and it really was not as scary as I had imagined it would be.

The cancer research has come a long way, so managing the nausea and sickness side effects from the chemo is very good these days. My imaginings had come from Hollywood films where people had cancer and were vilely ill. I was so relieved that I felt OK and my experience was nothing like the exaggerated drama in the movies. That is not to say that I know some people have a much more difficult time with the treatment and my heart goes out to them.