Post by Marcus Whitaker on May 22, 2010 17:10:21 GMT 1
Hi, I am Marcus or at least I think I still am, 53 years old in body, not in mind, single parent to a fantastic 10 year old little girl called Neve.
I am now 10 days into my first dose of adults chemo and the reason I call it that is, I had what I refer to as a child’s dose 2 years ago which I embarked upon due to my daughters instability at that time and I didn’t really notice much that I had had it apart from my blood count came down to acceptable levels after the first 4 months, however the last two months did nothing whatsoever.
I was diagnosed with Leukaemia (CLL) about ten years ago and was on what they describe as the ‘Watch & Wait’ syndrome, now I seem to be on the ‘Suck It & See’ syndrome.
I will explain but I must apologise if I offend anyone as I will be as blunt as I am in real life, whatever that is, so please don’t read on if easily offended.
My reasons for writing this 10 days in and not as it happened will become clearer as I take you back to that long awaited day Thursday 13th May 2010.
Just one other thing before we delve into the murky depths of the past ten days, please do not ask exactly what drugs or quantities as although I am aware of these they are not that important as the same as my levels, I don’t dwell on that sort of thing, I have a certain levels of trust of doctors, consultants as I do solicitors, barristers and judges, which is, read between the lines, they live for all their nuts and often get carried away with it, rarely explain anything in layman terms and as far as the later, just want to keep things going as long as possible as it is their bread and butter, maybe!!!
Also this is not a plea for sympathy or mothering as I am quite self sufficient, I would just like to record the events as they were and hopefully they may be of interest to somebody else out there, or you never know I might read this myself just before the next session.
I will actually just mention the couple of months prior to C-day, as it will give you a clearer picture of where I was. In March I finally had a abdominal hernia patched up which had been driving me up the wall and I needed a couple of weeks to recover from that before I had my house turned upside down literally with having central heating installed which I also desperately needed, not for the immediate future but certainly for next winter, my consultant, give him his due always gives me a choice of what months I wish to have poison pumped into my blood stream, so as always predictable I choose May to October as supposedly they are meant to be the warmest and less germ infected months of the year and with other commitments pending I choose the second week of the month and apparently according to previous guinea pigs the fifth and sixth day of treatment are reported to be the worst, so I again choose the Thursday to start the chemo.
Well I got over all of that with a week to spare except lots of niggling jobs requiring attention around the house due to the upheaval, however panic took over and I found I was not able to attempt anything to major that week except spend money, I didn’t have, on mostly fairly useless items, which I didn’t really need and will probably end up, back on eBay when and if I get round to it.
Thursday 13th May 2010 arrived, I took my daughter to school and left for the hospital, not allowing time for the new roadwork’s started that morning and of course those d**n parents taking their brats to school, so that was a good start I was late, only by ten minutes but I don’t like being late, although nobody at the hospital was bothered if even noticed.
As a bribe to make it sound more inviting I was informed before hand that the department had Wi-Fi so I took my laptop so I had something to do in the ensuing 5-6 hours, however what they failed to tell me until the day was that this was for staff only and not for patients.
So I settled myself into one of their many cumbersome chairs and I managed to find the one that gives you a chronic back ache after a couple of hours, although once converted into a human pin cushion we were allowed to mingle as long as we wheeled the drip machine with us, however the precinct and cinema were closed permanently, so sit in the chair was really all you could do, I did consider escaping outside for roll up but that was severely frowned upon; and yes thanks I have had all the lectures and I did give up for 13 weeks but suffered 4 fairly bad chest infections within that time, so decided I will try again the year after chemo again in the summer months to reduce damage limitations.
I finished my drip at 2.00pm after persuading the nurses to push it through faster, as I was advised if I was going to have a bad reaction to the drug it would be whilst it was entering my body; and it wasn’t, so I thought lets go for it, I need to get out of here and go home and hopefully see my daughter after school.
I drove home and arrived around 2.30pm, was feeling a bit groggy but on the whole not too bad, made all the phone calls to people that were going to email me and didn’t due to the misunderstanding, had a cup of tea and a roll up and sat down for well deserved rest from that back breaking god d**n chair. After much deliberation decided not to walk up the school to meet Neve; and leave plans as arranged for a good mother to pick her up, give her, her tea and take her to gym as she had to go anyway and then my plan was to pick her up from gym about 9.00pm once she was finished.
Not to be, luckily I had left myself some leeway, as at about 4.00pm my body started shaking and rapidly deteriorated to, well do you remember seeing film clips of the first flying machines and that sort of round contraption someone invented with like a massive cymbal on top which gyrated up and down in an attempt to fly, well that’s how I would describe it, it was all I could do to slap the central heating to override, crawl upstairs to bed fully clothed and that is where I stayed for the next hour and a half as I could not hold a phone let alone push buttons.
It eventually subsided by which time I was completely knackered and had no strength to pick my daughter up, my temperature was now fluctuating between 38 to 39 up and down like a yo-yo so I called the help line they give you for such situations and when I told them what had happened they insisted I was whisked back into hospital to be on the safe side, however I had arrangements to make for my daughter for that night and the morning for school plus people to inform by the time I had sorted all that I arrived back at hospital around 8.00ish pm by ambulance car which wasn’t quite so embarrassing as by the time I got there my temperature had settled, unfortunately it peaked once again at 39 so they kept me in that night. Give them there due they wanted to run all these d**n tests and all I needed to do was go to sleep, I rang Neve once she had finished gym and was getting ready for bed and explained with a few minor white lies, which I did correct the next day when I saw her. I had had enough of tests now and told them to go away and to let me sleep, which I did with my clothes on once again, although I had managed to throw together a case, I just couldn’t be arsed and I crashed till 5.00pm Friday morning.
To be continued..............
I am now 10 days into my first dose of adults chemo and the reason I call it that is, I had what I refer to as a child’s dose 2 years ago which I embarked upon due to my daughters instability at that time and I didn’t really notice much that I had had it apart from my blood count came down to acceptable levels after the first 4 months, however the last two months did nothing whatsoever.
I was diagnosed with Leukaemia (CLL) about ten years ago and was on what they describe as the ‘Watch & Wait’ syndrome, now I seem to be on the ‘Suck It & See’ syndrome.
I will explain but I must apologise if I offend anyone as I will be as blunt as I am in real life, whatever that is, so please don’t read on if easily offended.
My reasons for writing this 10 days in and not as it happened will become clearer as I take you back to that long awaited day Thursday 13th May 2010.
Just one other thing before we delve into the murky depths of the past ten days, please do not ask exactly what drugs or quantities as although I am aware of these they are not that important as the same as my levels, I don’t dwell on that sort of thing, I have a certain levels of trust of doctors, consultants as I do solicitors, barristers and judges, which is, read between the lines, they live for all their nuts and often get carried away with it, rarely explain anything in layman terms and as far as the later, just want to keep things going as long as possible as it is their bread and butter, maybe!!!
Also this is not a plea for sympathy or mothering as I am quite self sufficient, I would just like to record the events as they were and hopefully they may be of interest to somebody else out there, or you never know I might read this myself just before the next session.
I will actually just mention the couple of months prior to C-day, as it will give you a clearer picture of where I was. In March I finally had a abdominal hernia patched up which had been driving me up the wall and I needed a couple of weeks to recover from that before I had my house turned upside down literally with having central heating installed which I also desperately needed, not for the immediate future but certainly for next winter, my consultant, give him his due always gives me a choice of what months I wish to have poison pumped into my blood stream, so as always predictable I choose May to October as supposedly they are meant to be the warmest and less germ infected months of the year and with other commitments pending I choose the second week of the month and apparently according to previous guinea pigs the fifth and sixth day of treatment are reported to be the worst, so I again choose the Thursday to start the chemo.
Well I got over all of that with a week to spare except lots of niggling jobs requiring attention around the house due to the upheaval, however panic took over and I found I was not able to attempt anything to major that week except spend money, I didn’t have, on mostly fairly useless items, which I didn’t really need and will probably end up, back on eBay when and if I get round to it.
Thursday 13th May 2010 arrived, I took my daughter to school and left for the hospital, not allowing time for the new roadwork’s started that morning and of course those d**n parents taking their brats to school, so that was a good start I was late, only by ten minutes but I don’t like being late, although nobody at the hospital was bothered if even noticed.
As a bribe to make it sound more inviting I was informed before hand that the department had Wi-Fi so I took my laptop so I had something to do in the ensuing 5-6 hours, however what they failed to tell me until the day was that this was for staff only and not for patients.
So I settled myself into one of their many cumbersome chairs and I managed to find the one that gives you a chronic back ache after a couple of hours, although once converted into a human pin cushion we were allowed to mingle as long as we wheeled the drip machine with us, however the precinct and cinema were closed permanently, so sit in the chair was really all you could do, I did consider escaping outside for roll up but that was severely frowned upon; and yes thanks I have had all the lectures and I did give up for 13 weeks but suffered 4 fairly bad chest infections within that time, so decided I will try again the year after chemo again in the summer months to reduce damage limitations.
I finished my drip at 2.00pm after persuading the nurses to push it through faster, as I was advised if I was going to have a bad reaction to the drug it would be whilst it was entering my body; and it wasn’t, so I thought lets go for it, I need to get out of here and go home and hopefully see my daughter after school.
I drove home and arrived around 2.30pm, was feeling a bit groggy but on the whole not too bad, made all the phone calls to people that were going to email me and didn’t due to the misunderstanding, had a cup of tea and a roll up and sat down for well deserved rest from that back breaking god d**n chair. After much deliberation decided not to walk up the school to meet Neve; and leave plans as arranged for a good mother to pick her up, give her, her tea and take her to gym as she had to go anyway and then my plan was to pick her up from gym about 9.00pm once she was finished.
Not to be, luckily I had left myself some leeway, as at about 4.00pm my body started shaking and rapidly deteriorated to, well do you remember seeing film clips of the first flying machines and that sort of round contraption someone invented with like a massive cymbal on top which gyrated up and down in an attempt to fly, well that’s how I would describe it, it was all I could do to slap the central heating to override, crawl upstairs to bed fully clothed and that is where I stayed for the next hour and a half as I could not hold a phone let alone push buttons.
It eventually subsided by which time I was completely knackered and had no strength to pick my daughter up, my temperature was now fluctuating between 38 to 39 up and down like a yo-yo so I called the help line they give you for such situations and when I told them what had happened they insisted I was whisked back into hospital to be on the safe side, however I had arrangements to make for my daughter for that night and the morning for school plus people to inform by the time I had sorted all that I arrived back at hospital around 8.00ish pm by ambulance car which wasn’t quite so embarrassing as by the time I got there my temperature had settled, unfortunately it peaked once again at 39 so they kept me in that night. Give them there due they wanted to run all these d**n tests and all I needed to do was go to sleep, I rang Neve once she had finished gym and was getting ready for bed and explained with a few minor white lies, which I did correct the next day when I saw her. I had had enough of tests now and told them to go away and to let me sleep, which I did with my clothes on once again, although I had managed to throw together a case, I just couldn’t be arsed and I crashed till 5.00pm Friday morning.
To be continued..............