An
Ill Bloke’s Blog – Part 4
To
Southampton – And Beyond!
The seven mile trip in an ambulance from
Winchester to Southampton General, at 4pm on a grey Wednesday afternoon, took
the best part of an hour but the delay was nothing to do with the copious
amounts of forms they had to fill in before we left. Just sheer weight of
traffic; I tried to persuade the ambulance crew to let me feign an attack so
they could blue light us down but they didn’t seem too keen. Spoilsports.
But to be honest if I’m going to be there
for some while there’s no hurry; it’s not like I’ve got to get home for tea.
Eventually reached my side room in Ward D3
– so nice to have my own space without having to listen to or share everything
with others. The plan is I have the room for the duration, or one like it,
unless an emergency isolation requires me to be moved. There’s a view of sorts
and it faces East so I get the sun in the mornings. There’s plenty of
ventilation, light, ensuite facilities, comfy chair and room for my clobber.
BUT NO WIFI – this deserves a blog entirely of its own and will get one in due
course. Quick explanation is to do with a dodgy contract between the hospital
and a company supplying TV/telephone/internet bundle to the bedside. But it’s
archaic and expensive and means you can’t connect your own devices like phone,
laptop, iPad etc. Quite useless. Phone calls out to 01, 02 and 03 numbers are
free but incoming costs the caller 50p a minute, so forget that one. Also
forget calling mobiles, that’s completely out of the question unless you work
for O2 or Buckingham Palace.
 |
| A Room with a View (of sorts) |
But at least I have 3G of sorts and after several
typically frustrating phone conversations with Vodafone (“Press 5 to be
inexplicably cut off”) I managed to top up my 3G dongle with a tenner’s worth
of data. Of course, being unused to anything but a constant wifi connection, as
soon as I turned the laptop on it automatically downloaded stuff, updated
Dropbox, looked for new software and used up 20% of my valuable allowance in no
time at all. Thank you, Matt Fellows from work for helping me sort that one at
least. I also turn it off when I don’t actually need it.
My first evening at Southampton was a quiet
one. I was honoured to receive a visit from Prof PeterJohnson, the Big Boss, all on his own (normally doctors come in groups
of at least seven in case they get picked off in the corridors by predators).
He is such a nice chap – articulate, friendly, informative and obviously glad
to have a case of Burkitt’s in the place, having
remarked to a colleague that they hadn’t seen a case of it here for a year or
so. It is rare, but being a Centre of Excellence they attract the more unusual
cases from all over. The good Prof even managed to sort me a drip trolley, the
nurses having rather amusingly attached Horace, my drip pump, (and therefore
me) to the bed, thus making it impossible to visit the loo without dragging the
bed in with me.
The Prof explained what will happen – in
brief, non-technical layman’s terms, the treatment follows a schedule:
The first cycle is R CODOX M and the
initial letters stand for the chemicals used. Trouble is they sometime refer to
this as CAV or VCA. Confused? Moi aussi.
Day 1 – a pre-chemo drug (R) that flags up
the little bastards so that the chemo drugs (CAV) knows what to go for. Pretty
slow (4+ hours) because of possible allergic reactions. (As you will see from
the next blog instalment I did get a reaction, it felt like being hit by a ten
ton truck so they stopped, hit me with something else to relieve it then
restarted nice and slowly). That’s followed by three different chemo drugs
(CAV) all administered by the bedside, all in all about an hour.
Day 2-5 – Just a ten minute portion ‘push’
intravenously of the CAV, just the C.
Day 3 or 4 and repeated again a couple of
days later – Intractechal injection into the spine to get chemo in, as the body
has a clever cellophane wrapper which protects the spinal cord and brain, so
this gets around it. Again, more in episode 5.
Day 6-9 there’s not a lot going on until around
Day 10 is to do with putting in another chemo drug beginning with M which is
very intensive and strong, so once in there for a while it has to be flushed
out quickly to avoid it doing too much collateral damage.
 |
| Note the sexy surgical stockings... |
Depending on how my body reacts to all this
– and making sure the renal system is working well to keep everything flushed
through – my blood cell counts will drop. Red cells can be replaced by
infusion, as can platelets which make the blood clot, but the poor little white
soldiers that attack bugs in our bodies and prevent infection don’t fair so well
and before they start coming back, there is the danger zone for infection and
hence the hospitalisation with isolation, quick access to antibiotics and high
dependency treatment if necessary.
Approx Day 13 they start giving growth
treatment to encourage those wee white cells to grow again, before starting all
over again on Day 22 with the next cycle. That’s called R IVAC and I don’t know
much about it yet, except the R is the same one as in the first cycle.
So a cycle lasts three weeks and there are
four of them altogether. One stops and cycle no. 2 starts which is a bit
different from Cycle No. 1 (see above). Repeat so Cycle 1 becomes Cycle 3 and
Cycle 2 becomes Cycle 4 and you have a 12 week schedule.
After that – hey presto! – I am cured. At least that’s the plan. The prognosis
for this type of Lymphoma is pretty good and that’s where I am aiming. I have
always aimed high in case the arrow drops a bit on the way to the target.
To think of alternatives is, frankly,
pointless!
 |
| My Grade 3 - thanks, Louie! |
I will probably be sterile afterwards – oh
dear – and will lose my hair as part of the process – but having shaved my head deliberately two years ago for a role in a play called A Bolt from the Blue, in which I played a bald trichologist (hair
specialist) I know what I will look like (except a bit thinner and more haggard
this time I expect) so I enquired of Louie, a delightful Filipino healthcare assistant how I could get my hair cut, which I had deliberately been
growing for Cheriton’s A Month of Sundays.
He said I could get it done in the hospital but if I wanted a grade 2, 3 or 4
he would bring his own clippers in and do it himself!
“No need” I said, “I happen to have my own beard/hair
trimmer with me!”.
So after laying a pristine white NHS sheet
on the floor he duly gave me a grade 3 haircut. A fine job, the best, and
certainly cheapest, haircut I’ve had since I was shaved off for Bolt and raised some dosh for Naomi House into the bargain. Not sure I will be able
to raise any money in sponsorship for this one but there are ways and means of
raising some money for The Lymphoma Association which
I am looking into. David Greensmith, ex Cheriton resident, plus David Robinson,
Sian Tabberer, Paul McTaggart and I have all promised to kickstart a
fundraiser. Good will prevail!!! I sincerely hope to live a long time after
this too, as I might be a bit miffed if we raise £1000s and don’t. Now that
really would be annoying.
My next job is to set up a Virgin Giving page
for The Lymphoma Association and I will send a link once this is done.
Support
I’m not a religious person, having always
striven to be a Christian with a small C, but I do hope, once the treatment has
finished in three months’ time that there is a higher authority who has ticked
the box for me saying “this one is cleared and let off for good behaviour”. To
quote a line from AMOS, “if I get to
heaven and find they’ve been lying, I shall ask to be put on thunderbolts”.
So it was with a little guilt that I
politely refused the offer of a visit from the Chaplaincy. I would rather spend
the time with my family and friends, to be honest. No offence to my more devout
friends, it’s just how I feel.
More to follow in Part 5 (if you can take it)…soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment