Rest day

My last chemotherapy session yesterday started so early in the morning that I had to tape a flashlight to the handlebar of my bicycle because it was still dark outside. A few weeks earlier, some idiot had stolen the bike light that was there before. Who does this? In Switzerland! Violating a bicycle inside our building’s parking garage. There are no punks living in the building, no teenagers. I have no idea whom to suspect.

Anyway, it was still dark outside when I arrived at the hospital and the now familiar procedure commenced. I was a bit concerned about how my body might behave after the allergic reaction two weeks ago, but this time all was fine. The doctor had removed the oxaliplatin from the menu, and my body was happy about this. The liquids flowed inside me, and three hours later, it was all over.

Except, of course, nothing is over. The chemotherapy has ended but no one knows what effect it has had. What has it done inside me, besides giving me tingly fingertips, a bloody nose and hands and feet with a diminished sense of touch? No one can tell at the moment if the cancer cells have been cleared from my body. To find out, I’ll have another PET-CT scan at the end of April.

This imaging method builds on swallowing radioactive sugar that will then go to areas of high metabolic activity. As the patient remains completely motionless for about an hour before the scan, the only thing that should light up as metabolically active are cancer cells that never rest. The CT part of the scan helps localize these areas, which have to be about half a centimeter big to be seen. Individual cancerous cells will of course be invisible, as will be tiny growths. But there’s no way to see them anyway.

Flucha is trying to put some champion inside me.

In the weeks until the scan, I’ll try to recover from chemotherapy. I want my immune system – not a bad thing to have in these coronacious times – back and the sense of touch in my fingers and feet. I’m wondering what to do about the bicycle trainer. There’s no champion inside me. I’ve never been a fan of regular exercise and rode the trainer only reluctantly. Should I continue with it? If the weather picks up, I might go for rides outside instead. They say the roads are pretty quiet these days.

My prolonged rest day has started. With it, this blog will probably hit a patch of subdued activity. If nothing’s happening, there’s nothing to write about. But I promise I’ll write if something’s happening.