Monday 17 June 2013

Hot stuff

Picture from here
I started on the drug trial, TDM1, last week.  As it's a trial I had special treatment in the chemo unit.  There was a lot of attention, questioning and watchfulness from an assortment of nurses at regular intervals during the infusion.  Of course this is a Good Thing but, being an unreasonable git, I still found it annoying as it interrupted the intensive research I like to carry out while I'm on the unit.  That 'research' being the cover-to-cover reading of the type of celebrity gossip magazine I'm too snooty to buy but will happily consume in private if given the opportunity.  It also meant I had to be crafty about discarding the boiled sweet wrappers from the communal sweetie jar.  I think patients are meant to have one or two sweets not, like me, chomp their way through a hundred weight of the things and then come out with a sandpaper tongue, a major sugar rush and wonder why the NHS is short of money. 

Anyway, part of the irritating  info from the nurses involved possible side effects.  I did pay attention but have to admit I was thinking 'yeah, yeah, whatevs' as warnings were given, after all this chemo is known to have less side-effects than many others. 

It wasn't until a couple of days later when I stood simultaneously sweating and shaking in the supermarket that I wondered if the ice-cold/clammy combo was entirely normal.  There followed two days of grotty bed-bound  flu-like symptoms including an iffy temperature, a pounding head and everything aching.  

Fingers crossed that the cancer cells are feeling even worse than I did.


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