In this short, sensible post I will tell you all what it feels like to up your daily weekly intake of drugs, 14 in my case – blood pressure and statins, to 72 -80 plus 2 injections. I will also update you on my work.
80 odd drugs – Not too bad at all. Which is surprising give the toxicity of some.
My cycle starts on a Tuesday when I go to the haematology clinic to have my bloods checked (always plural for some reason) to see if I can continue the treatment or if I need more time for the blood to recover whatever it needs to recover. M and I hang around for about an hour and a half for the all clear and then I go to the room where a load of other bewigged, bald, mainly behaired actually, men and women get their dose. Many of them sit under what looks like hair dryers but are in fact head coolers supposed to minimise hair loss. After the stomach injection, I am given my bag of meds for the cycle and sent home. At home in the early evening I take ten tablets (these are the actual chemo drugs) they can have quite a number of side-effects but I experience virtually none. I could take the steroids but was advised to wait until the morning otherwise I would be awake all night. At night I take my two blood pressure drugs and an anti-viral drug to stop something or other. In the morning I take 10 steroids, another antiviral, an anti-anxiety, calcium, something to help my stomach digest, laxatives (to taste) and pain killers (to taste) but I have been able to stop these – the effects are subtle but somewhat cumulative.
- Tuesday – feel fine
- Wednesday – still feel fine but maybe a little less so- this is combatted by the steroids. A few hitherto hidden pains pop up but nothing troublesome
- Thursday- May feel a tiny bit shaky – like very, very mild flue – but again nothing troublesome and will be eating obsessively.
- Friday next injection (and sometimes 30 mins administering an intravenous drug) no change really – continue to feel a little bit shaky.
- Saturday – still on steroids so shaky symptoms not of concern.
- Sunday depending on whether I have had the intravenous drug can be tired or on the first cycle quite poorly
- Monday generally starting to feel better
- Tuesday next cycle starts.
My pattern for my weeks off is different. I still have the drugs on the Tuesday but no steroids so feel a wee bit rough on Wednesday. From then on I gradually emerge until by the weekend I start to feel great. This continues to the start of the next cycle on Tuesday That starts with a review with my consultant.
All in all really not at all unpleasant. No hair loss, sickness or any of the nasty things some people get. Energy a bit low and walking any distance a burden cos of back – but nowhere near as bad as I anticipated despite being on quite a heavyweight regime.
Getting quite a bit of creative and technical work done. I have taken my time optimising the set up for mixing the soundscape for my poem and for eventually recording the radio play. I now have a large hole in the wall between my office/studio and the piano room through which I have inserted various substantial cables (M is so tolerant) – also had to remove all the clocks that ticked. So now have a pretty good set-up that’s ready to go when I can recruit a few local actors in the winter. I have also set up two web servers at home to host some of my more experimental offerings that tend get me into trouble with commercial ISP’s. I have a fixed IP now. One old MAC cost nothing at all and the other PC cost £15 from Ebay.
I am not reading fiction as much as I was as my intake of technical material has had to increase substantially but looking forward to getting back to stories and poems. People are sending me loads of interesting links and suggested reading. Apologies if I don’t report back straight away but I am lazy.