If you believed they put a man on the moon, man on the moon…

  

Day 9

General status update

Hair: no change

Nausea Demon: confined to his room, and sulking. Playing loud rap music to make his feelings clear

Sense of smell (NEW!): magnified by about 300x. I can smell cooking smells from 200 yards away, and they TURN MY STOMACH. I am turning into a dog. A dog with nausea.

Anxiety level (1-10): They’ve sedated me, dude. And I love them for that.

State of mind: None, currently

 

 

So I’m on the phone first thing Monday morning to Sister Chemo at the Chemo Day Unit (Monday-Friday, 9.00 am -5.00pm)  - the so-called Chemo 24/7 Emergency Help Line, as you will remember, having been mysteriously unavailable over the weekend  - 

requesting urgent assistance, given my continuing acute gastric distress, and the fact that my supply of anti-emetic drugs, which should have lasted for a couple of weeks, is about to run out.

Sister Chemo is very nice, but it is quite clear that she will not be providing any active assistance to alleviate my distress; this kind of thing, it seems, is Not Her Problem.

 ‘Oh, your GP will give you something for now,’ she says, ‘and then when you come for the oncology clinic appointment in 2 weeks’ time, before your next dose of chemo, you can talk to the consultant and get it sorted out, if it’s still a problem.’

She then adds, in a confidential tone: ‘I tell you what, though, you should ask your consultant for a drug called Fosapprepitant for your next chemo cycle – it’s MARVELLOUS.’

 

‘I’ve already had that’ I reply, perhaps a little sourly. 

‘Oh dear’ says Sister Chemo ‘OH DEAR’.

So I call my GP’s surgery, tell the receptionist I am a chemotherapy patient with severe nausea problems who cannot come into the surgery right now because of the infection risk, and request a telephone consultation with the doctor as soon as possible.

She sighs.

‘We’re very, very busy right now’, she says ‘So he can’t talk to you today, but I can fit you in for a telephone consultation between 5.30 and 6.30pm tomorrow evening’. So that would be another 36 hours of unrelenting nausea without any help. I had been told that I should DEMAND to speak to the doctor if necessary, and that they are obligated to let me, but I’m too weak and upset to argue at this point, and I don’t want to break down and start weeping uncontrollably on the phone. Or begging.

 

So much for the urgent and immediate response to the needs of chemo patients – it hasn’t been a great start. By now I have tried all the prescribed official channels and got Absolutely Bloody Nowhere. So it’s time to try something else. I have one last telephone number I can try – at my last oncology appointment before chemo I had discussed with Stan the whole ‘How do I get help if things get bad between hospital appointments?’ issue, and he had given me the Chemo 24 hr. Emergency Helpline number, and reassured me that it was manned AT ALL TIMES, and that I would never be more than a quick phone call away from help.

 

 As an afterthought, however, he then gave me the number of the oncology consultants’ secretary ‘just in case’, saying that if all else failed I could give her a call, she would relay the message to him, and he would send a scrip down to the hospital pharmacy to issue me whatever meds I required. This would only work on a week day, obviously.

 

Calling this number is what I now think of as the Chemo Joker – it saved me.

 

I called the number, began talking, and then burst into tears. Through the sobs and the hiccups, while she made soothing noises and tried to calm me down, I explained to the oncology secretary - a truly wonderful woman called Dina whom I now love very much - the extent and duration of my nausea predicament, its on-going status, and the fact that not only did I need to add some new, different meds, but that the ones I already had were going to run out by the following morning.

‘I’m putting this into an email’ she said ‘and I’m sending it to Stan immediately. Give me the number he can call you back on. HE WILL CALL YOU, I promise.’

Stan called back within ten minutes.

Finally, the cavalry had arrived.

He quickly assessed the gravity of the situation, including my by this point very precarious mental state (the mantra ‘Goa, Goa, Goa, run away to Goa’ was now repeating itself in an endless loop in my brain), and said he would prescribe me more of the Domperidone and another anti-emetic drug, Cyclizine, which often proved helpful in particularly recalcitrant cases of severe and continuing nausea. He then suggested, gently, that an anti-anxiety drug might also be helpful at this point, which was music to my ears. Something along the lines of a horse tranquilliser might be good, I said, but he decided to give me Lorazepam. Stan promised that the drugs would be available for collection from the hospital pharmacy by mid-afternoon.

 

AND THEY WERE.

 

As I’ve said before, Stan’s the Man.

 

I should add that he apologised profusely for the problem with the Chemo 24 hr. Emergency Help Line, which was apparently unprecedented - the hospital has been having computer problems, and it was being fixed today. My GP, when I finally spoke to him, also apologised for his receptionist and assured me that I can ALWAYS speak to him or another doctor the same day if I have any further problems. And he has put ALL the anti-emetic drugs on to my repeat prescription list, so I can get them immediately when needed. This makes me feel much, much more secure, given that there are 5 cycles of chemo to go, and if there is one thing that is certain, in addition to death and taxes, it is that the side effects of the chemo will get worse as it continues.

The Cyclizine is helping enormously: the nausea hasn’t gone away, and I think it may well stay with me for the entire 100 Days of Chemo, but the new drug has somehow made it bearable, which before it wasn’t. It’s very hard to describe – the nausea is still sitting in my stomach, I can feel it, I’m still queasy ALL the time, but it’s not so sharp. I am going to be able to live with it, which is just as well, because I have no choice but so to do. 

In the evening, after R had brought me the drugs, and I had been very effectively sedated by the Lorazepam (which brings an entirely new meaning to the expression ‘Chemical Cosh’), I googled Cyclizine to see if there was anything I should know about this new drug. 

And Wikipedia told me that Cyclizine was the anti-emetic drug chosen by NASA as the space emetic for the astronauts who made the first landing on the moon. 

‘There you go, then’ said R, looking up from his Killer Sudoku, ‘If it’s good enough for Neil Armstrong, then it’s good enough for you’.