Day 8 and the night of wind and pain.

Well what a night that was! In fact no.. what a horrid 24 hours!
It started at 10:30 am Sunday when I had the second part of my chemo.
Although they give you all sorts of pain relief and anti-emetics to stop you throwing up, there is no escaping the fact that your quite ill. Not throwing up is just a small bonus. You still feel like it's the day after an all night bender and the room should be spinning.

I was too uncomfortable to write much in the afternoon, preferring the relative safety of my bed for the next 18 hours. Through out that time I had two IV drips continuously pumping more and more drugs into me. It's hard mentally to cope with that when you are feeling so unwell and just want it to stop. Every hour right through the night I was woken by Shkoza who either adjusted my drip or changed it for a new one.

I took the medication to get me "moving" at 6pm last night. My stomach had been quite tender and there hasn't much been happening down there due to all the drugs.
By 6am this morning I was in absolute agony, the meds had got things rumbling but Mount St Helens was still not about to blow. I phoned Shkoza and asked for some pain relief. By the time he returned I'd rushed to the toilet and thrown up from both ends simultaneously. (luckily the handbasin is adjacent to the toilet)
That's probably too much info for some of you, but it does give you some idea of how my day started. That was six hours ago and I'm only just starting to feel confident about moving around.

I saw the doctor this morning, nothing new. Bloods are good, but it's way too early to see any drop there anyway. The nadir (lowest point) for blood counts is usually around ten days post chemo. Still no bone marrow results.

There's another one of those catch 22's that's come to light with the bone marrow. If it's involved (ie: has been infiltrated by Hodgkins) then that's a very bad thing, and certainly my lower back ache around my pelvis where marrow is made and stored does nothing to ameliorate that fear. (I've been wanting to use that word for ages! Means reduce). If it is involved then I will need a third round of chemo to make sure it's taken care of. That means more cost and time etc.. not really a consideration, just an annoyance.
However If the cancer cells are expressing CD20 antigens, as some do, then we can use an antibody treatment called Rituximab. This drug is extremely good at fighting tumours and significantly improves the success rate. However I'd prefer it if I didn't have marrow involvement and we are just fighting three little nodes the size of scorched almonds in my mediastinum (chest cavity). Marrow involvement means systemic desease, best not think about it till tomorrow.

As soon as this drip is finished I'm going to go for that walk! See if I can't get lost in the Alps for an hour of three.

...Drips out!! yay!! I can move again. (well until I get the last 3 litres of saline this afternoon)

Later...