First session

My first chemotherapy session is fully over now.  It started on Monday with approximately four hours of transfusions interspersed with explanations and education on potential side effects.  When all the drugs had entered my body, I was sent home with a pump that would squeeze another 120 ml of drugs into my blood over the next two days.  I left the outpatient clinic at the hospital shortly after lunchtime.

A pump attached to a port in my chest with a valve taped to my sternum.

The term pump is a bit misleading, though everyone calls it that.  It’s a plastic bottle that contains a transparent bladder of low elasticity.  Inside this bladder is a solution containing the drugs.  For the next two days, I had to carry this bottle with me wherever I went.  It rested next to my pillow at night.  As the bladder slowly contracted, the drugs passed through a clear tube connected to the port implanted above my chest.  A body heat-controlled valve taped to my chest ensured a constant flow at the right speed.  When I returned to the clinic to have the pump removed 48 hours later, the bladder was almost completely empty.

The first three days of my chemotherapy regimen are apparently notorious for nausea.  I started each day with a capsule of a strong anti-emetic designed to last the entire day.  It worked.  I didn’t feel nauseous.  The other side effects were supposed to appear around days 3 to 5.  Today, I experienced some rumblings in my gut and a general sense of hazy tiredness, but nothing dramatic.  I felt confident enough to book a flight for a business trip to England in a week.

The side effects were minimal, but this is no reason for enthusiasm.  On the one hand, somewhat misguided, there’s the saying, No pain, no gain.  A drug that works has side effects.  Otherwise we’d all be doing homeopathy.  In some messed up corner of my mind, I've turned this logic around to say that a drug that has side effects works.  This is nonsense, but I want to suffer like I’ve never suffered before.  This would give me the feeling I’d be fighting the cancer with all I’ve got.

I might yet be getting what I long for because, on the other hand, experience teaches that the first chemotherapy session is always the gentlest.  As in my case, it frequently passes without adverse effects.  With every additional session, the drugs accumulate in the body until the patient retches and cries, bleeds and hurts, and can’t take it anymore.  The hope is that this kills the cancer before it kills (the fighting spirit of) the patient.

My spirit is strong, and I will fight to survive even when the suffering grows, but there’s one side effect that’s stronger than all physical pain.  The greatest torture of this therapy will always be the poor prognosis.  The moment I muse on this, all energy drains from my body and a sense of futility knocks me down.  I abandon hope and surrender to the disease.  There’s comfort in giving up.  Then I remind myself that I’m alive, that not all hope is lost yet, and that the ultimate goal remains the same and is still there.  I am ready for more.  The second chemo session will start on 11 November.