Eve of Destruction

Day 94 

General status update

Anxiety level (1-10): the root canal treatment yesterday was so unspeakably vile that the administration of chemotherapy tomorrow seems like a lesser evil. It’s all relative, innit?

Despair Demon: He was VERY freaked out by the Reiki on Monday, which undid all his good work and left me in an entirely uncharacteristic state of smiling, beneficent calm, which spooked R, too. It seems that Reiki is as Kryptonite to the Despair Demon. Well, tough – he’ll have plenty of time to reassert himself next week when the side effects of FEC5 are at their worst.

Nausea demon: I wish he wouldn’t get quite so Tiggerishly excited each cycle the day before the chemo is administered – I think it’s quite unseemly.

Chemo Muse: she’s very pleased with me as I finally got round to cutting and pasting all 93 blog posts into one document, which revealed that since chemo started 13 weeks ago I have written 103, 494 words, which is 10,000 words longer than my D.Phil. thesis (which took 4 years to write). Blimey.

Chemo Brian: Just seen off the Anti-Tooth Fairy, whose work here is (we all profoundly hope) done for the time being – the root canal won’t be completed until April, after the chemo has finished. They didn’t get on too well at first, but he warmed towards her after she took over his knitting and completed the Impossible Donkey in the Knit Your Own Nativity Scene.

PICC line: positively purring after its rendezvous with Matron Becky at the hospital this morning, when it behaved beautifully, flushing and giving blood on demand.  It says Becky has ‘good hands’ and, if she were a horsewoman, would undoubtedly be taking Olympic gold at dressage. And my PICC line would know.

Hair: Preening itself after being much admired at the hospital this morning, simply for still being attached to my head – very few heads of hair make it through FEC unscathed, apparently, cold cap or no cold cap.

State of mind: Still traumatised by yesterday’s half-completed root canal treatment, one of the most physically unpleasant procedures ever devised. We are now six months into this new world of physical pain inflicted by people with medical degrees, and if you look in my eyes you will see the message now tattooed across my irises: ‘I will tell you anything you want to know, betray all my friends, not to mention my country, and hand over to you all my worldly goods – just DON’T HURT ME ANY MORE’.

So, here we are again – the night before chemo, for the fifth time of asking. It’s routine, now. The bag for the chemo ward is packed: big woolly cardigan (to alleviate the cold from the Cold Cap), painkillers (to alleviate the pain of the Cold Cap), Smurf hat and snood (to swathe the post-Cold Cap frozen and gooey head), Kindle Fire, real books and the Big Red Book of Chemo, into which all the drugs administered must be written. Fruit, sandwiches, and drinks will be added in the morning before I leave.

My PICC line was taken through its paces by Becky the Chemo Matron at the hospital this morning, so it should work this time, and Becky has promised to be there tomorrow morning to supervise the administration of FEC5 from the off. FEC3 and FEC4 were very bad days indeed for me in the chemo ward, but I know that every effort is being made this time to ensure that things will go smoothly tomorrow.

And by mid-afternoon tomorrow I will be able to walk out of the hospital knowing that I will only have to do this one more time.

And in ten days’ time the worst of the side effects will be over, and I will know that I only have to suffer them one more time.

I can do this, really I can.

Where did I put the Lorazepam?