First day of chemo

Hello All,

Well what a long day. It all started at 7am getting up and travelling to London Bridge by car. The car was packed with all the stuff we needed when we moved back to kent. There was barely enough room for Shirin and I. We arrived at Guy's Hospital just in time for my first appointment.

I was not looking forward to this appointment at all. I wasn't sure whether they were going to put a PICC (arm) or Hickman line (neck) in. Thankfully they went for the PICC line, this is much less traumatic. They put some local anesthic in my upper arm and then passed a wire down a large vein near to my heart. Unfortuantely the chap doing the operation accidently dropped the first line on the floor. Needless to say this did not give me much confidence in his abilities. Anyway 2 more tries and he is all done. After the opp I asked him whether that warm gushing feeling was my blood, it was!

So, now that I have a PICC line in, it was time to start the chemo. This was a very lengthy process, but not unconfortable at all. Now that I had a PICC line, all drugs could be passed through it. The first bag was full of hydration fluids, this is to protect my kidneys from the chemo drugs. 2 hours later, with lots of trips to the bathroom I was ready to start the first official chemo drug. It only took 15mins to go through adn was bright red coloured. I noticed it also make your urine pink too, nothing to worry about. The next drug took 1.5 hours to push through and finally another 1.5 hours of hydration.

Luckly, came prepared for a long day and took a book to read and my Nintendo DS Lite. Shirin sat by me most of the time, except for when she had to go home and feed Alyssa. I managed to get an hours sleep.

I overheard that the people on the bed next to me were also from Greenhithe, so Shirin and I decided to have a chat with them. Ben has the same condition as me but is going on a new trial medication. They literally live 5 minutues from our house, so I suppose we will be seeing him quite often. The journey home was a nightmare, seemed like all the roads were blocked and I was starting to feel sick from the chemo.

Oh, I nearly forgot, the 3rd chemo drug is applied 24hrs/7days a week. It's a ball with the drug within it. The ball pumps the chemo into the PICC line in my arm. It is a little awkward, but I getting used to it. The only thing worrying me is that Alyssa will want to play with the line and may pull it out of arm, I can imagine that being quite painful.

We get home and pig out on pasta, then I'm off to bed (midnight).

simple notes:

sickness level: 2/10
very hungery ealier, ate quite a lot.
weed about 4 buckets! must be a world record.