Thursday 18 July 2019
I woke around 5:20 and couldn’t get back to sleep, despite feeling very tired. For around ten minutes I got a stitch-like pain in my right side which I hadn’t experienced before. It didn’t cause too much distress though and went away fairly easily.
A nurse came in quite early to check my blood pressure, temperature, etc, and to take some blood from my PICC line – no blockages this morning! My mum called a bit later and I spoke to her for a while. After the night shift nurses handed over the day shift nurses around 8 am, I was brought my morning Clexane injection, Metocolopramide and Omeprazole.
One of the doctors wanted me to have another chest x-ray, so my nurse called ahead and arranged it with the radiology team. I got myself up and dressed and headed down one floor for the x-ray. It was all pretty quick. I was feeling quite tired and fragile, but I coped ok.
I spent the next few hours sitting in bed, reading a bit and trying to progress with writing the blog, which I was about three weeks behind with. I had visits from a nurse, who pricked my finger to check my blood sugar levels, and a doctor, who just came to see how I was getting on.
I had a bit of hospital food for lunch: broccoli, peas, carrots and potatoes. Pia arrived not long afterwards. It was a beautiful day and we went for a walk up to the university gardens and sat there for a while. We then walked a bit further and dropped into a couple of shops before heading back to the ward. I was feeling quite a bit more capable than I had been in the morning.
We were back by 16:00. I was given my Dexmethasone dose for the day and was hooked up to my IV pump around 16:30 for the day’s chemo, which consisted of:
Etoposide – 500 ml over one hour
Etoposide – 500 ml over one hour
Saline – 1000 ml over one hour
Mannitol – 400 ml over half an hour
Cisplatin – 500 ml over one hour
Electrolyte solution – 1000 ml over two hours
Bleomycin – 250 ml over two hours
Pia and I ate a bit. She had brought me some rice and vegetables from home. Some hospital food also arrived, so I had some of that too: vegetable pie, potatoes and some other veg. We watched a film together and then Pia left shortly after 19:00.
The second day of inpatient chemo is always a long tiring session. I was quite tired but spent most of the evening awake, trying to add to the blog. I was utterly exhausted by midnight and tried to sleep as the final two-hour bag of Bleomycin was being infused. I was disconnected from the IV pump a bit after 2 am, and slept well after that.
A Journey Through Cancer 