Mid- Treatment

Ok, so, I've told you about my first few months on chemo but what I will tell you now is what it's like to be Mr. Awkward!

If you came in to this ward and asked about me, the nurses and doctors would freeze, look shaky and then proceed to tell you about me!

Due to the chemotherapy, your body is unable to properly regulate the production of blood products so when an infection sets in, your core body temperature raises in a bid to burn out the anomaly. Sadly, this means for patients atleast a three day course of antibiotics and whatever tablets you need.

With me however, I turned out to be the problem patient over my first 12 months by having a few high temperatures (39'c+) and then catching a different illness! 

As you grow up, you may remember getting Chicken Pox and Measles and then never getting them again. What I didn't know was that the Pox virus stays within your body but when your immune system is compromised, the virus actually can reappear as Shingles! I noticed a few raised lumps on my stomach but I didn't really make the connection as the tube from my port to the sores were the same length, hence I imagined it was a burn from some leaked chemo. After informing the Doctor, he knew that it wasn't a burn and promptly put me into isolation for the sake of the ward and I was locked away for around 10 days!

My next interesting illness was actually a few months after the Shingles episode. For my treatment, I was being given the drug Methotrexate, an industry standard as it were. However, I decided to play it difficult and instead of letting the drug filter out through my kidneys, it was storing up and it was scaring the nurses. Most had never seen this reaction before, I believe I even predated the ward for this reaction!

The treatment to get the drug out of me wasn't that bad but it was just the uncertainty of what the cumulative effect of a week of the drug rolling around inside me that had the staff worried.

Luckily, the antidote became available and I was informed as to the cost! A cool £64000, heh, I was definitely getting my fair share of drugs :)

After the drug was administered, my treatment stopped so they could monitor me and my kidneys and as you can probably guess, I turned out fine :) apparently there was a mighty cheer from the nurses when I was allowed home as you start to lose your mind looking at the same walls over and over again.

The doctors kindly gave me a week or two off to recover and then they put me back into my standard treatment, with some tweaking but it was pretty much plain sailing into my maintenance period.

Although, that's what I'd like to say.