It wasn’t the best start to the day. We left the house with 40 minutes to my appointment, and ended up arriving 5 minutes late. We caught the train, which is usually an 8 minute journey (2 stations) to the nearest station to the hospital however yesterday was different. Firstly there was a signal fail on the way to the first station, this resulted in us waiting inside the train on the tracks for 15 minutes. When we finally arrived at the station that was having the signal issue, we had to change platforms and get another train. The wait was only 3 minutes. We got to Parliament station and exited the station only to be faced with torrential rain AND hail! Someone was not making it easy to get to the hospital today! It did however all work out fine, we were only 5 minutes late and the chemotherapy unit had really just started their day.
I started off with having my height, weight and temperature recorded (a normal practice for anyone undertaking chemotherapy) and then I was taken to an administration room. There were 5 chairs which would soon be full with other patients. My nurse for the day was extremely bubbly and nice, which was a good thing as this calmed me a little.
I was given a cannula into my left hand and started off with a drip containing saline, followed shortly thereafter with some anti-nausea medication (administered via the drip).
The chemotherapy I am having is ABVD. The order of the drugs I was given were;
- Doxorubicin (the ‘A’ in the above acronym) – about 100mm, the nurse had to watch over the administration of this drug as it can damage nearby tissue
- Vinblastine (the ‘V’ in the above acronym) – about 60mm, the nurse had to watch over this one as well
- Bleomycin (the ‘B’ in the above acronym) – about 100mm
- Dacarbazine (the ‘D’ in the above acronym) – this took the longest to administer. It was 600mm
All up with the constant saline I would have had at least 1000mm of fluid pumped into me.
I was visited by a chemist during the treatment and supplied with a plethora of anti-nausea drugs, I was given the following;
- Dexamethasone 4mg (to be taken 2 time daily, starting tomorrow)
- Granisetron 2mg (to be taken 1 time daily, starting tomorrow)
- Aprepitant 80mg (to be taken 1 time daily, starting tomorrow)
- Metoclopramide 10 mg (to be taken at anytime nausea or vomiting occurs
The whole chemotherapy process took 4 hours. We got a taxi home rather than the public transport, and will probably stick to taxis in future to avoid unnecessary contact with other potentially sick people.
I felt fine for the afternoon, no real change. After dinner I started to feel a slight head ache and a bit of nausea. The nausea faded after taking some anti-nausea medication and some ginger tea. We went to bed early around 21:30.