Yesterday I had my second-to-last chemo session. It was a day to forget. All started well, though a bit early for my taste. The doctor was happy with my blood values, even if my immune cells were a bit low. There was not much left of the infection that had felled me ten days earlier. I was cleared to go.
The nurse connected my port, flushed the lines with glucose and started the first set of drugs, oxaliplatin and calcium folinate. All seemed fine. I was working on my computer, as if the hospital bed were now my home office, productively and with my energy. After about 30 minutes I started sneezing. I sneezed not just once or twice but a good ten times in a row. This is something that had happened before, not during chemotherapy but after, when I was riding my bicycle home or back to work. I didn’t think much of it.
The nurses did. They asked me if anything felt wrong. And indeed, there was a tingling sensation around my lips, as if I had eaten something I was allergic against. I was ready to blame it on the face mask I was ordered to wear when I entered the clinic, but that can’t possibly have been the culprit. My hands were also bright red and I had a bit of a dull recurring pain below my lung. The doctor, quickly called to the scene, blamed it on the oxaliplatin. There was no explanation why this would happen during the eleventh session but not before.
I was injected with two different antihistamines whose side effect was described as causing drowsiness. And indeed, a minute later I had to put my computer aside because I could hardly keep my eyes open, much less think straight. The nurse restarted the drugs, but only slowly. At some point they were flowing faster. I have no clear memory of what happened. Maybe the normal flow was reached, but it was quickly interrupted when red spots were discovered on both of my arms.
The therapy was called off. This seemed a bit excessive to me, but excess is what rules Switzerland at the moment. The measures against coronavirus are frequently overdone. It feels a bit like airport security where sense is less important than ticking boxes. In Switzerland, all shops are closed except grocery stores. I mentioned this already. Turns out that one of the large stores next to the train station where we shop had most of its non-food items cordoned off. They’re apparently selling only essentials. I wonder how underwear doesn’t count as essentials when half the country are shitting themselves with fear. The other grocery store, meanwhile, happily sells gin and whisky as if one couldn’t survive without.
Wouldn’t it be more essential to have an optician open? What if I dropped my glasses and stepped on them during a panic buying spree in the rice and pasta aisle? I couldn’t do home office anymore because I wouldn’t see a thing. And why do restaurants remain open for takeaway but not book stores?
Anyway, I was lucky that my chemotherapy was continued after my unexpected reaction to the first ingredient of the cocktail. Avastin, the antibody, was deemed sufficiently different from oxaliplatin not to cause any problems. And so it turned out. I got half an hour of Avastin and then a shot of 5-fluorouracil and a bottle full of it to take home. All throughout, I remained drowsy and never more than half awake.
A coffee and a pastry in the hospital cafeteria (still open!) woke me up a little. I rode my bicycle home and fell almost straight into bed. The next morning shortly after six, I was fresh and awake and ready for life. When I return my bottle tomorrow, I’ll have to ask whether I can get the drugs that were withheld from me. It would be a shame to do chemo only half-assed.
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