No more Hickman line

I had a lot on, yesterday, and I was far too tired by the evening to do any writing. Sorry about that.

I woke up a bit earlier than usual, or rather was woken for my blood and couldn't get back to sleep afterwards. The ward round was quite late in the morning, and filled me in on what was planned for the day; platelets first, to bring my clotting up, then cyclophosphamide and my intrathecal methotrexate in the afternoon. Quite a busy day. Everything went quite smoothly, but I really was quite busy; the only time I got a chance to lie quietly all day was after my intrathecal, and for some reason I just couldn't sleep then. Instead I watched the final hour of The Godfather Part II, which I started watching on boxing day. Eventually, around nine o'clock, I finally felt very tired indeed and went to sleep early.

Today was a lot quieter. It was decided that my Hickman line had finally become more of a liability than an asset, so it would be coming out at some point in the afternoon, which also meant that I'd need a peripheral line inserted. Apart from these little procedures, though, nothing out of the ordinary was planned. Mum came round to visit after lunch (fish and chips), and Shamus inserted a peripheral line into my right hand. It's weird being hooked up by my arm, again, after so long using the Hickman. I was given my cytarabine injection into the new line, then it was flushed and disconnected; it's nice being free of the lines. I had a little sleep, then Emma — one of the registrars here — removed my Hickman line. Due to the amount of damage I'd already done to it, it was literally just a matter of snipping the suture anchoring it to my skin and pulling it straight out. It wouldn't have held in for very much longer, even if it hadn't been removed today, I don't think.

Anyway, I'm quite tired again, now. Good night.

Happy Boxing Day!

Sorry for not updating yesterday, I don't really have an excuse other than festive laziness — I was too busy watching television during the time I'd normally have spent blogging to write anything.

Yesterday was quite good fun. Mum, dad, Francis, Gabriel and Madeleine all came up to visit in the morning, and brought me my presents. Socks and bottles of smelly stuff dominated the proceedings (the staff bought me a little nice little French Connection toiletries set), but I also got an impossible jigsaw puzzle, a Mighty Boosh DVD and a copy of More Brain Training for the DS. Apparently my brain age is 60.

All of the excitement got to me pretty quickly, and everyone cleared out after lunch to let me take a nap. I ended up spending most of the rest of the day on my own (aaaaw), which is a first for me on Christmas. Mum and dad came to visit again for a while in the evening, and we watched Doctor Who. After this, I channel surfed for a while and then went to sleep for the night.

I was woken up at 1 o'clock and then at 2:30am to have some blood taken for one of the tests they run against my antibiotics dosage, then again later in the morning for my regular full blood count sample. I'm sure there were other interruptions during boxing day morning, because I woke up at nine o'clock feeling pretty shattered. To compound this feeling of rubbishness, the relatively rich food I ate yesterday conspired with the fizzy lucozade I've basically been living on to give me quite a sore tummy throughout the day. As a result, I just tried to sleep as possible; I did watch the first third of The Godfather Part II, but apart from that I really did sleep – or at least doze – for most of the day.

Mum and dad were up to visit during the afternoon, and left to drive dad to the airport. He flew out to Uist for a short break on his own, just him and his cold, at the little house we have up there. He'll be back down in Glasgow next week, at which point Mum plans to go up to Uist with, with Madeleine I think. Anyway, Mum visited again in the evening, but I slept right through this; I only heard from the nurses later on that she'd been up.

I'm going to watch another hour of this movie now, I think, and then go back to bed. Good night.

'Twas the night before Christmas

And all through the ward, not a creature was stirring; not even the irrepressible Dr. Tansey. He'll be in tomorrow, though.

Mum's got my little room looking quite festive, with lights and a jar of baubles and a little plastic tree from Habitat. She complains that the nursing staff gave her a row for not making the place up earlier. I've even got a Christmas stocking hanging from my gas cylinder bracket, with a present or two waiting for me. The family will come up tomorrow morning to open their presents with me, so I'll wait. It'll be interesting to see what Santa brings The Man Who Has Everything Including Cancer.

I felt slightly better today than I have done, I don't know whether it's the last vestiges of the infection leaving me or if I'm just getting used to the trauma the antibiotics are visiting on my system. Hopefully I'll be well enough tomorrow to eat the roast potatoes which the kitchen have promised to send up for my Christmas lunch. If not, it'll be festive rice cakes and Lucozade for me. The nutritionist will be very disappointed with the missed opportunity to put on weight.

Nothing interesting happened with my treatment, today. I officially finished the second week of phase two, with the fourth injection of cytarabine, so I suppose that's worthy of a milestone; only two weeks of chemo left in this block. The decision seems to have been made to put in a new Hickman line at the end of the week, once I'm off the antibiotics; this one is really starting to fray at the edges, and they're quite worried that it'll be colonised by bacteria sooner, now, rather than later. It's been quite a while since I last went under the knife.

Anyway, slightly better or no, I still feel pretty rotten. I'm going back to sleep.

Antibiotics

Writing up a bit earlier today, what with the scarcity of late-evening consciousness lately. Thanks to everyone who's been enquiring as to my health during my recent blog hiatuses. I've been trying to sleep as much as possible, lately, and feeling pretty awful during those times when I've been awake. The high-dose antibiotics have utterly wiped out my intestinal fauna, so I can't really eat anything at the moment. Not that I've felt like eating anything in the past three days; I attempted some lightly salted tortilla chips this afternoon, but I soon gave up when my stomach started making some rather alarming noises. I might try again with some rice cakes or Ryvita or something later, if mum manages to get a hold of any for me.

Today was pretty quiet. Mum was up for a while in the morning, and stayed through the ward round and my cytarabine intravenous. She seems a lot more familiar with this sort of pump-'em-full-of-antibiotics medicine than she's been with the acute cancer chemotherapy stuff, and I think that makes her feel a bit more secure; I think she deals with people who feel like I do right now every day, at work. Dr Tansey tells me there's nothing can be done for my antibiotic-induced diarrhoea until they're sure I don't have clostridium difficile, but hopefully by tomorrow the lab will have got back to us with that and they can start me on the codeine. For now it's water and potassium tablets, and just hope I don't lose too much more weight.

Whoops, so much for posting early; I fell asleep after typing this up, and never got around to signing off. Well, I can do that now: goodnight.

Back inside

Sorry again about the lack of updates, I developed an infection on Thursday and this is the first time since that I've felt well enough to type anything.

My uncle John drove me into the hospital on Wednesday, quite late in the morning, for my day in. He hung around long enough to sort out my duvet and see me into the care of the nursing staff, but headed off soon afterwards as he's not one of my named visitors. The nurses lost no time in getting me hooked up with a line for my cytarabine, and set up a second line for my blood transfusions; apparently they wanted to get everything out of the way before my intrathecal at three. Thus, I got my chemotherapy in record time and had two units of blood pumped into me at a rate of one every two hours. I also met with the nutritionist again, and she was pleased that my weight was holding steady; she prescribed some Fortisips for use at home, all the same. After this, they wheeled me round and gave me my lumbar puncture and methotrexate, and then just left me to rest for a while. All the day's activity had worn me out a little, so I think I slept for a bit. I can't actually remember what I did for the rest of the day, so maybe I slept longer than I thought; mum probably came up to visit in the evening.

I was woken for my bloods on Thursday morning, but fell back to sleep until about ten o'clock; the rest of my morning was pretty uneventful. My chemo was scheduled for about two, but some emergency on the ward caused me to be forgotten about for a couple of hours. I was eventually remembered and dosed with cytarabine, and then I phoned mum up and had her collect me. She got me home for about six, by which point I was already feeling a bit rough; I'd been dozing off in the car. I went straight upstairs and slept until dinner time, but I wasn't really very hungry and left most of the potato and cauliflower curry which mum had made for me. I went back to sleep, but decided (nutritionist's orders!) that I'd better get something substantial for a snack; I ordered in a fish supper from the place up the road, and mum collected it for me. Once again, I didn't finish the entire meal; I managed most of it, though, and my sister finished it off for me. After I was finished, I went back to sleep. I spent most of the night waking up and thinking I might vomit, but I just put this down to post-chemo nausea and eating too much; when I eventually was sick, mum called the hospital just to be on the safe side. They decided that my temperature wasn't high enough to worry about, so just sent me back to bed. I spent most of the night waking up and wishing I'd vomit again, just to get it out of my system.

Friday morning came, and I got quite a long lie. I really was feeling pretty unpleasant by this point, so mum eventually insisted that I get up and move it into the hospital. My temperature on admission had jumped to 37.9, which was rather cause for concern when weighed with my vomiting and tiredness; the doctors came round in due course and started me on a course of massive doses of vancomycin, gentamycin and tazocin, plus fluids. Apparently the doses of antibiotics they give people like me are high enough that they need to test blood in between administrations, to make sure they've not boxed in my kidneys. Anyway, they got me started on those, measured my temperature again (38.4C, ouch), gave me a paracetamol and left me to sleep it off. And sleep I did; I can't have been conscious for more than about three hours in total over all of Friday. The treatment seems to work, though, and my temperature was already falling by the nighttime.

I've felt much better, today. They still have me on antibiotics, and I still feel pretty tired and lacking of appetite, but much better overall. Much reduced nausea and tiredness, for one thing, though the tiredness was quite nice in a way; just sleeping through everything was better than dozing through the way I did today. I got my chemotherapy quite early today, and later on a unit of blood. The blood is still going in just now, as a matter of fact. What with the chemo and antibiotics, I've been hooked up to a couple of lines pretty much all day; this looks set to continue for tomorrow, at least. Hopefully I'll get my freedom of the room again soon. For now, I'm going back to sleep.

Edit: oh yeah, I almost forgot about the title of this entry. Because of my infection, they won't be letting me out again for the duration of this treatment block; if I'd remained healthy, I'd probably have had another day or two outside, possibly just stretching to Christmas. As it is, I'm in from now until mid-January, which kind of sucks; I guess that's just the way it has to go. Oh well, I've put up with longer incarcerations.

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, I was too tired to write anything on Sunday and I had no internet access last night.

Sunday saw the last of my four days of daily cytarabine injections; the nurses are getting pretty good at streamlining the procedure, so I was out by about one in the afternoon. We decided to go for a drive up to the James Hamilton Heritage Centre, a park in East Kilbride which has a boating loch with a nice short (a mile or so) walk around it. In less cancer-riddled days, I learned to sail, kayak and windsurf there; I don't think the protocol lets me back in the water until about 2010. Maybe global warming will let me dispense with the wetsuit, by then. After a circuit of the park, we went to the Centre's cafe for some tea; me, mum and dad shared a pot, and Madeleine and her friend had hot chocolate and Rice Krispie cakes. I shot half a roll of Provia 100, then accidentally rewound it all the way past the leader when I was changing to some Tri-X 400+2 for shooting indoors; it would actually be worth buying a leader retriever, just so that I could use those last sixteen frames of expensive colour film. Maybe I'll do that.

Once we got home, I took a little nap. A mile is quite a big step up from our usual five-minute walks in the park, and it did wear me out a little. My thigh muscles are actually still a little tired from the exertion, even today. I got through the rest of the day quite quietly, but got really tired at about nine o'clock and just couldn't muster the energy to do anything for the rest of the night – blog-writing included – so I just went to my bed.

We didn't go into the hospital on Monday until quite late, so I had a bit of a long lie. I had no chemotherapy scheduled for the day, so I just had my blood taken and then we waited around for the ward round to reach us. The doctors gave me the once-over and mum got the chance to have a little chat with Dr Morrison, December's consultant. I wasn't due any treatment on Tuesday, so the doctors offered me the opportunity to just spend the entire day at home; the caveat being that my blood count revealed that I was quite anaemic, so it really would be at home – I'd be too tired to really do anything else. The alternative would be to come in for a couple of units of blood, which would take about eight hours to administer; I could spend Tuesday in either my own or in the hospital's bed, and I thought the former sounded better. The doctors prescribed me two units of red cells for Wednesday, and sent us on our way.

I'd invited some friends, Michelle and Joe, around for lunch at one o'clock. They arrived just as we did, so we went inside and chatted and listened to music and stuff while mum made a nice wild mushroom risotto for us. We also played some Mario Kart on the old Nintendo 64, which was brilliant fun, before mum called us in for lunch; the risotto was delicious, but apparently mum thought it was somewhat overcooked. Michelle and Joe left after lunch, Michelle having work at four; mum gave them a lift down to the train station, and I went to take a nap. I spent the remainder of the day in bed, nursing my anaemia, and then my internet connection connection cut out; apparently it was something wrong on Virgin's end, because it was working again in the morning. I took advantage of the break in connectivity to get some sleep.

As for today, it's been just as uneventful as predicted. I took some photographs of the cat in the garden while the light was nice, this morning, then went down to my gran's for a lunch of fish and boiled potatoes. Internet chess and listening to music occupied me for most of the rest of the day; I went downstairs for dinner, but apart from that spent most of the day in my room. Tomorrow will be pretty busy, what with the blood and intrathecal and all, and so I think I'll turn in now for an early night.

A walk in the park

I got up early this morning, at about half past seven, and made pancakes for breakfast. I couldn't find a measuring jug, though, so I just experimented with adding milk a bit at a time until the pancakes spread in the frying pan the way they're supposed to. We headed into the hospital for half past nine, and arrived a little later; Angus was on today, and okayed me to have my chemotherapy in the morning rather than waiting in all day the way we've been doing. So, I got my blood taken and hooked up to a line, and got my chemotherapy at about half past ten. I had the dressing on my Hickman line changed while the fluids were going in — it completely disintegrated last night, somehow, and was just hanging together by the corners. Anyway, we were out and blinking in the daylight by one o'clock, and with my mercaptopurine in a phial in mum's bag; no need to go back into the hospital at all, today. Hooray.

We decided to go for a walk in Victoria Park, because it was just a quick drive away under the Clyde tunnel. We walked around the boating pond and saw the ducks, then saw a family feeding the swans on our way back, with the inevitable swan-on-child finger-pecking. I decided that the fossil grove was too far to walk that day, so we drove back home. I took a nap for a couple of hours, and had a microwave cannelloni for an afternoon snack.

I spent most of the rest of the day just pottering around the house. I took a couple of pictures of people around the place, and rested quite a lot. I also arranged lunch with a couple of friends on Monday, so that should be quite good. I think I'll go for a shower, now, and go to bed.

Routine

I felt pretty good today, much better than yesterday; I think I might have had some sort of a hangover from all the treatments I had on Wednesday. We went into the hospital quite early, and only just got caught in the rush hour traffic. Mum dropped me off and went on to her work, and I got to work on Clare's site; it's really coming along, now. I ate a "share with the family"-sized bag of salt and vinegar Kettle Chips in a single sitting, whose fat content both impressed and terrified the doctors. They're confident I won't have any problems putting my weight back on, once I get through the treatment.

At midday I had my lunch in the hospital, then got a little tired and went for a nap before my chemotherapy. The cytarabine turned up a little earlier today than it did yesterday, and I got the intravenous at about three o'clock; two hours of fluids followed, so I just stayed in for dinner. Dad was along at six to pick me up, and we sorted out my drugs and the arrangements for tomorrow and went home. Dad dropped me off and went to the supermarket to get himself some dinner; I took the walk down to gran's house for a little visit.

Tomorrow, it's hoped, my chemo might be a bit earlier — possibly even in the morning, if things go quickly. This means I might get out in the daylight, for a change; it'll be nice to go for a walk in the light with the Leica. If we can't get the chemo early, I think mum and I might go for a walk in the park before the I.V. I also managed, today, to get half-way through organising another lunch visit with my Uni friends, before my phone's battery ran out. Oh well, I'll be able to sort that out tomorrow. Big plans. I'd better get an early night.

Phase two

Today's now the second day of phase two of my treatment — apologies for not writing anything yesterday, I was far too tired. We went into the hospital very early in the morning, mum and I, and it was confirmed that we'd be forging ahead with the consolidation stage of the therapy regardless of my platelet counts. I was scheduled for intrathecal methotrexate, intravenous cyclophosphamide and oral mercaptopurine, all in the one day; there seem to be quite a lot of different chemotherapies involved in this stage. Because of the intrathecal, unfortunately, I'd be spending the night in the hospital.

As it turned out, my platelets were actually at 78 — they'd jumped back, just as the doctor predicted. The first treatment of the day was the intrathecal, and it went just as smoothly as the ones I've had previously; I have a little bit of back pain, but I managed to dodge the headache entirely. Next up was the cyclophosphamide, which is a mustard gas. You know, like they used in world war one. My stuff is a bit more sophisticated, but the essential chemistry is the same; the dose came packaged in a suitably sinister-looking mustard-coloured drip bag. Mercaptopurine wrapped up the day, two rather unassuming pale yellow tablets; they're still proper chemotherapy, though, the nurse who delivered them carried them in a pill cup in gloved hands. I was advised to try to minimise contact between the pills and anything that wasn't my stomach.

After my early morning and all of the treatment, I was pretty tired in the evening. Mum and dad were over for a while and left at about ten; I fell asleep an hour or so later. It was hideously warm in my room, that night, so I didn't sleep very well, and woke up feeling pretty tired. I suppose there might have been some aspect of a hangover from all of Wednesday's chemotherapy involved, too, but I've felt pretty listless today. I was told quite early that I'd be allowed home, which is always nice to hear; I looked forwards to playing with my Leica in the daylight. Before I was free to leave, however, I was due some more chemotherapy; as it turned out, I ended up getting this intravenous cytarabine at about four o'clock in the afternoon. Just as it was getting dark. Two further hours of IV fluids followed, during which time I just had my dinner in the hospital; I was given my daily mercaptopurine, had my medicines bag double-checked, and I was free to go.

Mum drove me down the road, and we went for a little walk in the park along with dad and Madeleine. I had some toasted cheese for my supper, rather a lot of toasted cheese in fact, which I ate sitting in front of the fire. Being home is brilliant, even if it is just for a short while.

One last reprieve... again

We got up early this morning and headed back into the hospital, where mum dropped me off before heading off to work. I had my blood taken and settled in for the day, so I was quite surprised when the doctor popped around at eleven to announce that my platelet count was still too low for them to begin the next phase; they really want to see those at seventy-five billion per litre before they start me on the new poisons. I'm told I shouldn't worry that things are getting a bit behind schedule; my platelets should just jump up all at once, after the marrow-suppressive effect of phase one wears off. Anyway, it looked like I was getting home again for another day on the outside. I stayed for lunch (moong bean curry, which I had with some crisps) and mum picked me up after her half-day at work.

Once I got home, I discovered that my Leica had finally arrived from Oxfordshire. I lost no time unpacking this and loading a roll of Tri-X 400, and wasted a handful of frames just snapping stuff to familiarise myself with the controls. Mum and I took a little walk in the park at about three o'clock, and I took another couple of shots in the nice light. I find I'm getting quite a lot of my old strength back, now that I'm getting all of this exercise walking up and down stairs and so on; hopefully I'll get enough of these days out this phase that I can get back to something like my old self. Mum went out to buy some shopping, afterwards, and I pottered around the garden for a bit taking pictures of the bare branches; eventually the light failed entirely, and I gave up and went back inside.

Despite my early morning and considerable exertions, I found myself to be remarkably awake and alert during basically all of the day; I suppose this might be due to sleeping better on my tailing-off dosage of steroids. Anyway, I tried and failed to take a nap at about four; instead, I spent a while on my Grand MP3 Collection Organisation project. It won't be long now before I can set iTunes on random and never have to skip a single song. I broke off this effort for dinner, which was a delicious home-made lentil soup with rolls and (for some reason) potato scones. I managed to get a couple of hopefully quite nice photos of everyone at the dinner table; it'll be interesting to see those ones, at least, from this test roll. After dinner, I grabbed a bottle of beer and we all relaxed in front of the fire for a while.

The rest of the day passed mostly uneventfully. Dad was unreachable on his mobile, so mum had to drive off to the hospital to collect my bedtime medicines; I've been started on a new antifungal, Posaconazole, but the rest is just the same old. He got in later on and popped up for a minute before going to his bed; the exam he was taking today seems to have gone okay. I sorted out my drugs, after he'd gone, and settled down to write this up. I still don't feel particularly tired, but I'm going to try to get to sleep anyway; very early morning, tomorrow.

One last reprieve

Me and mum headed in to the hospital this morning for my blood count, and got a bit of a scare when one of the nurses mentioned in passing that the plan was for me to stay in the hospital that day. Luckily, nobody could suggest any real reason why I should stay other than that it wasn't the weekend; my neutrophils are still climbing, and my platelets still aren't high enough to start the next treatment. Thus, we managed to wrangle one more day on the outside. We headed home via the supermarket, where we picked up some food; we'd invited Gran down for dinner.

I made myself some nachos for lunch, then Gran McKernan and my Aunt Jean came for a wee visit. They were both pretty happy to see me after such a long time, gran especially; I think she's been a bit worried that the strict limitations on visitors would be kept up even while I was home. We had some tea, but they eventually left before dinner itself; I went upstairs and had a little nap before dinnertime.

Mum made a really nice macaroni cheese with roast potatoes and parsnips, and some Brussels sprouts. I think I ticked sprouts on the menu at the hospital, as well, when it looked like I might be in for Monday Supper; I'm glad I got the ones at home instead, and I don't even like sprouts. After dinner, we participated in the great family activity of watching television for an hour or two; I got a little tired, eventually, so I headed upstairs and had a rest before organising some files and CDs and stuff to take back into the hospital with me tomorrow. I've got enough now by way of games and so on that I should be able to survive the next phase of treatment.

Speaking of treatment, one of the things about being home is that I've had to self-administer, and therefore pay attention to, my medicines; normally I just get a little cup of pills each morning/lunchtime/dinnertime/bedtime, and knock these back without thinking too much about what's in them. Here's a roll-call of what I've been on since I got home — bear in mind that these are just my normal everyday meds, nothing special or chemotherapy-ish: Domperidone, the Champagne of antiemetics, four times a day; Omeprazole, further anti-sickness, in the morning; Fluconazole, prophylaxis against fungal infection, mornings; Aciclovir, prophylaxis against viral infection, mornings and night; Co-trimoxazole, prophylaxis against bacterial infection, Monday morning; Dexamethasone, steroids, mornings; Laculose and senna, laxatives, morning and night. Phew.

Tomorrow sounds like it's the start of phase two of my treatment, the consolidation stage. Stay tuned for word of all the exciting chemotherapies I'll be getting over the next five weeks!

Another day at home

I slept well last night, in my own bed, and woke up at about eight. Once we'd got my morning pills out of the way, mum and I had breakfast and headed off back to the hospital for my blood count. We got there at quarter past ten, and I had blood taken and my dressing looked at; we waited around for the results to come back, or rather mum waited while I took a nap, and then we were allowed to go back home. Mum dropped me off, and went to buy some food for lunch; I went upstairs and rested for a while.

I invited James, Ewan and Michelle around for lunch, and they arrived at about three o'clock. We just sat around and talked for a while, but it was good fun and it was really nice to see people again. Mum made a delicious spinach and ricotta lasagne for us, and left us to our own devices. Unfortunately, inevitably, I got a bit tired and had to shoo everyone off for about half past five.

After a couple of hours of rest, we had dinner; dad made some chilli which I had with pita bread, rice being deemed off-limits just to be on the safe side. Home-made food really is the greatest stuff in the world, one just doesn't appreciate what one has till it's gone. After all the food and excitement of the day, I retired to the attic and read for a while. Ten o'clock at the hospital again, tomorrow, so I'll sign off now and go get some sleep.

Home Sweet Home

It took a little longer getting home today than we were expecting; the registrar wanted me in for the results of my full blood count, the pharmacist wanted me in for the delivery of my discharge medications, the nurses wanted me in to go over what I should take and when. In the end, mum was allowed to drive me home at about three o'clock, just in time to catch the football traffic. Oh well, I got home eventually.

They've really worked hard to tidy the house up, in my absence; we have a rather stylish red wooden christmas tree from Habitat rather than the dust-and-germs magnet of a real tree, and the attic bedroom has been cleared out for my stay. Mum and dad will be sleeping in my considerably messier room, for the duration.

Climbing the stairs to the attic is quite hard work, for me. I never really appreciated how much I've wasted away in five weeks of lounging around the place; it's quite shocking, in fact. I can get up and down easily enough, one step at a time, but... well, it's a lot more work than I remember. I risked the arduous climb down, though, soon after I arrived, in order to make myself some toasted cheese; the first food I've made myself in over a month, now, and a really nice change from hospital toast.

After this, I retired to my citadel and enjoyed the benefits of a real live wired-in internet connection. After a month of 3G's lag and temperamentality, it really is a treat to be able to click a link and know that it's going to work first time. It'll be hard going back, but I suppose I'll manage.

Gran came up to visit at dinner time, along with my aunts from down the road; they headed off quite quickly, but gran stuck around while mum and dad took Gabriel and Rachel (his girlfriend) to see the final performance of this year's Gang Show. Madeleine, as it turned out, neglected to get tickets sorted out for her friends, so mum and dad gave up their seats and let Gabriel and Rachel take care of the youngsters. I suppose dad'll have to watch the DVD with me later on; I'm sure he didn't mind missing the live show too much.

Anyway, we had a huge fish supper for dinner, from the relatively hygienic chippy up the road; I've not eaten so well in forever. I had a little nap afterwards, and spent the rest of the day relaxing in a bed with a duvet. It's quite late, now, and I'll need to get up quite early tomorrow to get into hospital for my bloods. There's quite a lot of excitement planned for Sunday, so I'd best get my sleep.

Freedom!

It's been determined that my neutrophil counts are now high enough that I'll survive outside of isolation. Therefore, and because I have no pressing treatments looming, I should be allowed to return home on day pass; this means I'll be allowed outside of the hospital, and only have to return in the mornings to get my blood taken. I'm quite happy with this news — I've spent five weeks, now, in this room, and it'll be really nice to get out for the change alone.

Michelle Scott popped in for a visit today, and mum came in to meet her. They talked for a while about the sorts of things that it'd be inadvisable for me to do once I got out – this was before I was told I'd be getting out tomorrow, when the assumption was "next week-ish" – and just chatted generally with each other for a while. I was feeling a little tired, so I just let them get on. Eventually they both headed off, mum to feed the family and Michelle presumably to see another patient, and I got back to messing about on the computer.

There's not a lot else to say about today; my usual updates on what I'm reading, and so on, seem rather inconsequential next to the big news of my looming release. I wonder what I'll write about tomorrow.

Phase one complete

Well, I got my final dose of intravenous vincristine today as planned, thus concluding the induction phase of my chemotherapy. I've been lucky that I've had nothing worse than dry skin tingly fingers by way of complaints; hopefully things will continue as they've started. I'll be in for another week or two while my neutrophil counts recover enough that I can go home, but it's nice to have this milestone out of the way.

Nothing else really to report, today. I'm feeling a little tired, nothing serious, but I think I'll go for a little sleep now. Good night.

Mini-recap

Monday was fairly uneventful, except that I got another package through from Amazon containing a couple of books along with an electric razor and the oddly compelling Pokemon Diamond. Nothing interesting happened medically, unless you count a couple of nosebleeds, but at least I was entertained and got to look a bit less scruffy; I've not been able to shave since admission. I read a bit of The Sea, played through the demo section of Avernum 5, and noticed at midnight that it really was a bit too late to start writing a blog entry.

Tuesday was busier. I started the day with a plate of scrambled eggs on toast or, at least, the closest to scrambled egg which can be made with pasteurised egg. Nice and protein-ey, mind you, and it made a nice change from plain toast or porridge. The doctors were in early to make their usual observations on how well I'm doing, and to lay out the day's schedule; bone marrow aspirate at eleven thirty, then my intrathecal methotrexane at two. I also made the mistake of mentioning that I'd been eating peanuts to try to get my weight up a bit; I've never seen more horrified doctors in my life. Nuts, it seems, teem with every sort of fungal infection you can imagine. It's something to do with the fact that they're left sitting around dark warehouses for months and not really prepared in any sort of anti-anything manner. Fortunately I seem to have dodged that particular bullet, but that's nuts and seeds off the menu. I really like nuts.

Anyway, the bone marrow sample came out much more smoothly this time than last, and the procedure isn't nearly as painful as people would have you believe. Or maybe that's just the painkillers and lorazepam talking. Not to mention the lidocaine. The little hand-drill still felt odd, going through the bone; it hadn't occurred to me that drilling was involved before, even though I must have got a much bigger hole drilled during the taking of my on-admission bony core sample.

Lunch was wheeled in immediately as Angus was finishing up, and long before I should have been sitting up. You'd be amazed how difficult it is to eat veggie mince and potatoes lying down. I was able to pivot about thirty degrees on my hip, so it wasn't too messy, though mum did draw parallels with the Ancient Romans when she walked in on me thus. After lunch, I was informed that the 2PM was off — they'd taken heed of my moaning about nosebleeds, taken another look at my clotting, and decided to get me some platelets before the main event.

Blood products take ages to organise, I don't know how the A&E department manage; you'd think haematology would have some sort of hotline. Long story short, it was four o'clock before I was wheeled along to the intrathecal procedure room. The lumbar puncture went well, the samples were good, the chemotherapy went in without any problems; I'm quite glad, nevertheless, that that's the last of those for a while. Back to my room for half past four, for my mandatory two hours of post-IT lying-flat-on-my-back. Dinner, spinach and potato aloo saag with rice, at half past five.

After my many drugs and procedures, I was pretty much shattered during the evening. Dad was up briefly, I think, and I passed out at about ten. Hence no blog.

Today was, of course, much quieter. I met the consultant for this month for the first time, though I've forgotten her name right now, and she seemed nice enough; it seems she's busy elsewhere, though, and will only be performing her duties on ward 24 on the odd day here and there. Doctors Tansy and McDonald will be filling in the blanks, from what I understand.

I noticed this morning that 3 finally seem to have got around to setting up proper monitoring of my internet usage. That is to say, when I use the internet, my traffic credit seems to decrease by a roughly corresponding amount. To celebrate having, apparently, two gigabytes of traffic remaining, I spent the morning installing the compiler for Haskell, a very nice functional programming language which was developed largely at (yay) Glasgow University. It's a great language for just playing about in, though it has to be said that I've never personally talked to anyone who's ever used it for any serious task; I have fun enough with it, and that's the main thing. I also grabbed ImageMagick, finally, and got it working with Rails, so hopefully now I can wrap up the programming side of Clare's site. Still waiting on a couple of things from Amazon before I can do the one or two tiny wee bits of artwork which I need for the site.

It was made note of yesterday that my skin's been drying up a bit which is, of course, an infection risk. Therefore, I showered this morning with an antibacterial moisturiser "soap substitute". Horrid stuff, but I guess I'm doing okay if that's the worst I have to put up with. I also slathered my elbows and hips in E45 cream, so that should keep the dermatologist happy. Maybe I should spend the time I'd normally be shampooing (saved time in the shower! baldness' silver lining!) just showering normally, then put the moisturiser on afterwards.

Weight holding steady, no interesting new side effects to report, final chemotherapy of this phase due tomorrow at some point, plenty to be reading and playing and doing, plenty of internet credit to tide me over. Things are going well. Goodnight.

Lack of updates

Sorry about this, I was distracted from blogging yesterday and I'm far too sleepy today to write more than these few sentences. Fuller explanation/mini-recap tomorrow, I promise.

Bit bored now

I had no treatments tests or anything interesting done to me today, and only a quick head-in-the-door from the doctor. I also didn't seem to have anything like the latent boost from yesterday's blood that I'd been hoping for, and didn't feel like doing anything much productive. I did try to do some work on my aunt's site, but I got mired trying to sort out the ImageMagick library (needed for image resizing and so on) to work with Rails on my Mac; it now looks like I'll need to wait until I can install linux on this machine, before I can sign off on the task. Oh well.

I got through Vernon God Little, as I mentioned yesterday, and today planned to get started on The Fall of America a little book of Alan Ginsberg poetry which my sister's godfather (and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma survivor) Michael Clancy brought me back from his Thanksgiving holiday. However, I've never really read poetry before and I'm not sure quite how to approach it, so I decided to put it aside for now and started on John Banville's The Sea. Banville seems to know an awful lot of obscure words.

Apart from that, today, I watched some Heroes, played through the start of Avernum 5, slept for an hour while mum was up after lunch, was too lazy to write out Christmas cards, took my sleeping pill. Good night.

Blood blood blood blood

Wow, that sleeping pill hit me pretty hard last night. I was woken this morning out of really quite a deep sleep, to have my blood taken; I completely failed to notice the nurse cleaning my line, drawing 20ml and tidying up afterwards, and though she'd just forgotten to do it. Weird. Anyway, she also set me up with a drip while she was in; I was due 3 units (!) of blood, apparently due to start some time that morning. As it happened, the first bag didn't show up until 1pm, so I spent the morning feeling all rubbish and anaemic.

I felt absolutely invincible in the evening, though, after I'd had the first few in. Lacking anything else particularly worthy of my superhumanly boosted work ethic and powers of concentration, I messed about with a couple of mathsy/programming problems on Project Euler, and polished off a big chunk of the work remaining on my aunt's site. Maybe I'll finish the rest tomorrow while I'm still feeling the benefit of the blood.

Apart from the unprecedented blood transfusion, there wasn't an awful lot went on today. I got through the quite funny Vernon God Little, and watched a movie with my lunch. Mum and dad visited variously throughout the day, with mum leaving in the afternoon to go to see my sister in the Glasgow Gang Show and taking her and her friends out to get some food afterwards. Apparently they all met Franz Ferdinand at the café they went to. Dad came up for a while in the evening and had some soup for his dinner, and we shared quite a nice bottle of perry. Mum popped up after dropping my sister off with her friends, and then they headed down the road together.

Four weeks

Well, that's four weeks down since my diagnosis was originally phoned home; I was in Jim's Bar at the QMU this time last month, feeling bored and just a little under the weather. Now I just feel bored, so I that's an improvement. Wish I was in the pub.

Oh well. Quiet day today; read a little in the morning, messed around withe Clare's site for a bit. Dr. Tansy popped round on his last ward round at about 11; the consultants cycle through Glasgow's haemotology and oncology wards each month, so I'll be meeting someone new tomorrow. Mum was up during lunch, and had a lasagne from the fridge while I had some quite nice breaded haddock. She headed down the road to supervise delivery of the new fridge, and I got back to doing nothing much. I started watching the last of my stockpile of back episodes of Heroes over dinner, but dad turned up during the title sequence; I'll watch it some other time. Mum was also up for another brief visit while dad was here, and left just a little after he did.

Anyway, it's quickly becoming apparent that the crafty pharmacist put my sleeping pill in with the stuff I was given earlier in the evening, rather than leaving it with me, so I'm going to have to cut out a bit earlier than usual tonight.

Conclusions and beginnings

It turns out that that fight with the slug-ship thingy was the final battle in Phantom Hourglass, after all. There's still some side-quests and the obligatory Zelda collect-fest to do before I can realy say I've completed it, but that's the end of the game proper. I'll need to find some other game to occupy myself with, now; maybe I'll get the new Pokémon next, that ought to waste a couple of weeks. I also managed, finally, to get through Use of Weapons; I actually quite enjoyed the book, but it's totally thrown my two-days-per-novel rhythm. I've started on Vernon God Little, 2003's Booker winner, which is a bit shorter and comes quite highly recommended; it's got to be better than this year's, anyway.

In more interesting news, I finally had my head shaved today; I decided I'd had enough of having to use three towels in the morning to get all of it off after showering. I've not had anything more extreme than the odd trim done to my hair since about 2003, so it's quite a change. I'm sure I'll get used to it soon enough. Oh, yeah, and I was sure to take before and after pics; I'll post them later. I'm quite keen now for the last little bits to fall out, so I can see how I look completely bald; there's maybe another week to wait, for that, though I suppose I could hurry it along with a shaver.

I got my final dose of daunarubicin today, along with the penultimate vincristine. Mum had a read over the treatment protocol while she was up, but I stopped paying attention to her around about the hundred-week mark. Apparently I'll be getting quite a lot of something which was derived from Mustard gas, which sounds pretty awesome. I've no more treatments scheduled now 'till next Wednesday's intrathecal; we did, however, today set in motion the process of finding me an unrelated stem cell donor -- if the siblings don't come through for me, I'm now looking at an upwards of 80% chance of finding a suitable match. This is reassuring.

Anyway, I've been given a sleeping pill to experiment with tonight; might as well make the most of things while I have a pharmacy down the hall. Apparently there's a cannabis-based anti-emaciant pill available, but they'll only give me that if I get emaciated. Spoilsports.

Getting there

I got a nice surprise today in the news that I wasn't due another of the dreaded intrathecal injections -- I'll have my third and final I.T. next Wednesday. This stage of treatment is almost complete, in fact: I have one more round of intravenous vincristine and daunarubicin tomorrow, then the methotrexane before a final dose of the 'cristine next Thursday. After that, all that's left is to grab some bone marrow samples and wait a week or two for my neutrophils to recover, and then I should be back home for a while. It'll be strange being outside, after I've got so used to this room.

But, I suppose it's long enough till I'm getting out that I really shouldn't be thinking about it. Only madness lies that way. To take my mind off of my now intrathecal-free hours, I tried in vain to finish Use of Weapons; I'd forgotten how long these science fiction books could be. I'll get through the final sixty or so pages in the morning. I made better progress in Zelda, as it happened, and am now on what I assume to be the final battle; at least, I'm chasing down/fighting a ship which seems to have been possessed by giant purple slug-monsters, and I'm pretty sure nothing's going to top that. Maybe I should take a break and get back to that in the morning, too.

Dad was up after his work and my dinner, and brought with him a vegetable crumble ready-meal thing which was neither microwavable for me nor vegan for him. I think mum might have that for her dinner tomorrow. Mum was up later on, though, and brought me a tub of soup and some rolls. The soup had six grams of salt in it, three per serving, but I was hungry enough to risk the kidney failure. She also brought up a spare roll of Kodak Tri-X film for me. This should probably should last quite a long time in here, which is just as well as the second roll she brought up was Ilford HP5 in the wholly unsuitable 120 format. Maybe I should buy a Holga to put it in. Or a Hasselblad.

Anyway, I was up terribly early this morning (didn't get back to sleep after having my blood drawn at 7am) and so find myself rather tired. I think I'll try and prune off another couple of pages of that Banks, then get some sleep.

Occupational therapy

As a bit of a change of pace from the usual reading and online time-wasting, I spent a while this morning working on coding up a little art gallery and journal website for my aunt Clare. It's quite good fun, having a little project to be getting on with; it feels kind of normal. I think I'll put a couple of wee hours of work a day into it, while I'm in here, then sort out actually putting it online once I get out.

Mum was up for a while after lunchtime, and we had a little lentil soup together. She brought up my old Canon EOS 5 with her, so now I'll be able to take some pictures of the people who've been keeping me alive this past month. I've no idea why I didn't think to get a camera earlier, I suppose the idea of being locked in a room for six weeks just isn't all that inspiring to photography-type thoughts. Well, I have my camera now and I'll get some spare film tomorrow, so we'll see how I get on with those.

Before dinner, I was paid another visit by the dietician; she was pleased to see that my weight appears to have stabilised. She had a look over the food intake chart which I've been keeping since last we met, and prescribed cream crackers and cheese (yay!) as a snack. She left me with a crate of the accursed nutrient milkshakes, to help me get on the road to putting on some of the weight I've lost; I'll need to see about getting in some nice fatty peanuts or similar, to speed the process. I wonder how long it will take to put on a stone?

Finally, dad came by for an hour later in the evening. Coatbridge, the town where his nursery school is sited, has just been voted the dreariest place in Scotland; this is a good thing, apparently, to be able to put on one's grant applications. Every cloud, I suppose, has a silver lining.

Nothing interesting happened yesterday

I woke up quite early on Sunday, finished reading Our Man In Havana before breakfast. Mum came up to visit in the afternoon, and I had a short nap; she headed down the road to go to mass, then came back up with dad for dinner. They talked for a while about putting in a new kitchen, and about whether I was getting enough fluids now that I've been taken off of the saline IV, and left at about nine o'clock; I started reading Iain M. Banks' Use of Weapons, one of his Culture series, then went to sleep.

Today was better. Mum came up after lunch, and brought a portable hard drive containing my music collection and a bunch of American telly which I'd downloaded, along with enough movies to keep me going for a while; organising everything into iTunes alone, will be hours of fun for a rainy afternoon. We tried to figure out from our recollections of the treatment protocol whether I'd be home for Christmas -- barring infection or other complications it really rather looks like I will -- and listened to the news on the radio. Some mix-up in the kitchen resulted in my being sent pureed chicken with mashed potatoes and carrots for my dinner, bizarrely enough, which mum was good enough to choke down; I had a microwave pasta thing from the fridge. After tea, mum headed off to the drawing class she's doing at Glasgow; I kept an eye on an eBay auction for my 21st birthday/Christmas present, a Leica M6 camera.

Later on, dad came to visit; he sat and did some work while I burned him some CDs and babysat my auction. I won, in the end, and for a good three hundred or so pounds less than what I was willing to pay. Taking a new camera out to play is definitely something I'm looking forwards to once I get out of isolation, now; in the meantime, it'll be good to get some pictures of all of the people who've been taking such good care of me. Dad left at about half past nine, and I listened to some music for a while; I think I'll got to bed, now.

Internet rations

After my internet hiccup on Thursday night, I took the opportunity to quickly read over the service terms. I really should have done so earlier, but taking such initiative would have been highly uncharacteristic; perhaps even diagnostically so. The bit that jumped out at me is that 3 will quietly start charging me £0.10 per MB of internet usage the moment I exceed the 3GB/month contractual limit. This is £100 per GB. £100 per GB is a lot. One slightly panicked phonecall to customer services revealed that I have about 300MB left in-contract; cutting back is called for.

Accordingly, I've switched back to reading for hours on end; I think I'll finish the excellent Graham Greene's Our Man In Havana before bed. Dad got a nice boxed set of Greene hardbacks for Christmas last year, so I don't expect this will be the last time we meet. It's also dawned on me that I've missed about a century of cinema so far, so I should probably be getting on with watching a few films. I'll need to make a list; suggestions welcome.

Apart from some platelets in the morning and a couple of shots of asparaginase after lunch, today was pretty quiet. Dr. Tansy popped in while mum was visiting and gave her the usual update on how there's absolutely no way my treatment could be going better, and I had a little nap after dinner while dad was up. There's nothing interesting scheduled for tomorrow, as far as I can remember, so I think I'll just read for a little while now. Good night.

Side-effects

Sorry I didn't post anything yesterday, I was without internet for most of Thursday evening after some fault on 3's end. It's okay though, I passed the time by reading Mister Pip, one of the better entries on this year's Booker list.

Anyway, side-effects: boy have these ever started. I've been noticing hair in the shower for the past week, just a little strand here and there, and on my towel after I've dried off. Yesterday, however, I found I'm able to tug out little clumps without really any effort at all; I can't imagine it'll be long before it starts shedding spontaneously. Oh well. I suppose I should have some wooly hats brought in and take up on the nurses' offer of a buzz-cut.

A more annoying effect I've started noticing, more insidious than the chemo-chic alopecia, is that my fingertips have started to tingle a little. Apparently this is due to vincristine attacking my peripheral nervous system, and should recover once this step of the treatment stops; I'll just need to put up with feeling clumsier for a month. My toes remain, for now, un-tingly.

Liz came to visit again today, after lunch, and we had the usual chat about how I'm getting on. We also talked about my internet access solution (3G broadband, I'm sure I've mentioned), and about the possibility of supplying internet access to people at the Beatson that way; it sounds like it would cut through a lot of the bureaucracy surrounding these things. I also mentioned this blog to her, though I don't know how long it'll take her to catch up through all of the interminable recapping.

In addition to my usual steroids and anti-everythings, I was given four units of plasma today; got to get my clotting up before the intramuscular asparaginase tomorrow. In addition to that, though, I got some beer! Nobody seems to have any objection to me drinking a little on my non-chemo days, so mum brought me up a bottle of Cobra to have with my chilli this evening. There's probably plenty of calories in beer, too, so even the dietician should be happy.

The Gorging

Well, it turns out that dropping a stone in a fortnight is cause for doctorly concern; they like to be able to intervene at around about 5% mass loss, rather than the twelve-ish points I've dropped. It is with heavy stomach, therefore, that I report on the first day of the Great Crash Anti-Diet 2007: I've been prescribed four meals a day, plus a meal-size snack, in addition to one thousand calories of sugar-and-protein milkshake. Oh, yeah, and it'd be great if I could get a couple of desserts down me too, if I can manage. Total food tally for today: toast for breakfast, macaroni cheese and chips plus an aloo saag and rice for lunch, veggie lasagne plus soup and a roll for dinner, three milkshakes in between meals, and a couple of satsumas. I'll be meeting with the dietician again on Monday, by which point things will have started to turn around.

In addition to today's ridiculous amount of food, I was also given a couple of units of blood. Blood is wonderful stuff, it's no wonder athletes dope on it; I did my exercises today while the second pack was going in, and I would have just cycled forever if I hadn't been interrupted to eat more. If things keep going like that, I'll be fitter leaving this place than I ever was before.

Speaking of leaving, Dr Tansy had another chat with me about my treatment schedule; we didn't cover anything new, in particular, he was just keen to double-check that I understood the time-scales involved. Barring complications, my stem cell treatment has been pencilled-in for the end of February; everything up until then should just be one routine course of chemotherapy after another. Maybe I should get a hobby. A time-intensive one.

Tuesday

Michelle from CLIC came for another little visit today, and so happened to turn up while my dad was here. We talked for a while about the different ways 'grown-ups' and young adults take news like cancer; apparently my laid-back attitude isn't so unusual amongst patients in my age group, and apparently being worried sick is just about par for the parents. I suppose it's reasonable that parents, people who are used to rising to their childrens' problems, would find the feeling of helplessness distressing when faced with this sort of thing. Oh well. I suggested mum might like to talk to Michelle, too, so she put off pencilling in our next meeting until an appropriate time could be arranged.

Apart from that, today was pretty quiet. I did a little bit of programming and faffing about on the computer, finished a couple of the games of chess I've been playing online with my uncle and Uni friends (won one!), downloaded some telly to be burned to DVD and brought in for me. I was also weighed for the first time almost since I was admitted, and found with some dismay that I'd managed to shed about 14kg in two weeks. The nurses were also a little surprised at this, but I'll wait for Dr Tansy's opinion before I panic too much; 2.2kg can be accounted for from my effusions, and my spleen has really slimmed down since I got on the chemo. In the end, I'm only about a stone lighter than I was healthy. Anyway, immediate result: two dinners! I'll see a dietician tomorrow, no doubt I'll be bulking up on the protein shakes by Friday.

As for the status of this blog, now that I'm up-to-date: I really could spend another thousand words recapping the little bits and pieces of last week, but I won't. From now on, I'll try to keep to short little daily posts like this one; the events will be fewer and more mundane, but at least I'll be able to go to sleep a bit earlier :)

Recap V

So, one week down. I was stable, I had a full set of chemo in, I wasn't displaying any interesting side effects yet; everything was going just a little too well. Accordingly, my Hickman line picked Saturday night/Sunday morning to fall out. Just a little bit, enough to need the nurses to change my dressing and the domestics my bedding while the doctors made up their minds about what to do next; re-siting isn't an option, so it's either pull the whole thing out and put a new one in on my left side, or leave it in and hope really really hard that it doesn't take an infection. In the end, the latter was decided on; with luck and a bit of suture, the damaged line would hold for the remainder of this leg of the treatment.

With the doctors starting to feel comfortable taking more to the sidelines, I started to find myself meeting the rest of the healthcare and social work staff who'd be looking after me during my illness and recovery. I'd be speaking with a couple of nurse specialists, apparently, who would be largely responsible for making sure that I wouldn't go mad in isolation. The modern NHS is very thoughtful. The first of these, Carol, I'd already met during my initial weekend visits to the unit; we talked about how I was feeling, for a bit, and about what I was planning to do with the next couple of months. I think my ridiculously laid-back approach to having cancer threw her a little; her job would probably have been a bit easier if I'd cried a bit, or something.

Carol also introduced Michelle of CLIC Sargent, a charity interested in the care and well-being of young cancer patients. Michelle's first order of business was to extend me rather a generous grant towards my Amazon wish-list, before going on to explain the sorts of things which CLIC organise; conferences, 'special days', the usual meeting-with-fellow-patients stuff. Visits to the pub, while apparently frowned upon officially, were not entirely ruled out.

By the time I met Liz, Carol's opposite number specialising in pediatric and young adult cases, things were really starting to fall into routine. Apart from a chest x-ray and another tiny dislodge and re-suturing of my line, nothing was being done to me outside of the chemo and other treatments as per protocol; I got a headache from my intrathecal, but this hardly counted as the sort of cool side-effect or exciting medical emergency which had defined the week before. I was starting to feel a little bored, as expected, and I think Liz picked up on this; we mostly talked about what sorts of things I could look forwards to later on. One thing she did mention, which I found quite interesting, was that I might be invited to talk at a young-people-with-cancer type event some time down the road. September would be the next such opportunity, so I asked her to put me down as a 'maybe'; they'd look pretty silly if they booked me in and then I died during the summer, after all.

Medically, then, my second full week since diagnosis was pretty straightforward. My skin is a little dry and I'm a little tired, and I've started noticing just the tiniest increase in the amount of hair stuck in the plughole, but other than that I'm holding up fine. Recap concluded!

Recap IV

On Friday I was slated for Hickman line insertion, a more routine little surgery in which a tube is inserted into a big vein, snaked under my skin and allowed to exit in a more accessible anatomical location. In this way, twenty-four hours access is provided direct to my right jugular, through a couple of ports in my shoulder. Convenient! Downstairs to interventional radiology, a quick jab of lidocaine and a scrub down, and we were all set. Twenty minutes later I was coming around from my natural non-drug-induced (honestly) nap, and that was that; everything *seemed* to have gone in just fine.

Back upstairs, then, and... pretty much nothing, actually. The line was left to settle in, so I continued getting my fluids through the original drip line in my right arm, and I was left to spend the day reading The Gathering, this year's rather dreary Booker prizewinner. Maybe something interesting will happen on Saturday?

Or maybe that's a bad wish to make, in a hospital? Saturday morning, and it's time to put the line through its paces. It should be trivial, in theory, to extract blood from the line. Not so, in practice; apparently my line featured a kink, which necessitated all sorts of gymnastics and breathing exercises and coughing and stretching and waving my arms and maybe stretching again *just a little more* before the merest drop of blood would issue. Hardly ideal. Putting stuff in, though, was another matter; the sales pitch was spot-on in regards how easily I could now be hooked up with not one but two simultaneous infusions or transfusions or injections or *anything*. The wonders of modern technology.

The day's other wonder of modern technology, and a far more welcome one in my little one-room world of a book and a radio and a played-through video game, was a visit from the internet fairy. While I was fighting the Hickman line for enough blood for my tests, dad was braving the city centre in search of a 3G modem; fortune favoured, so by about two o'clock he and mum came up with a laptop and a connection to the outside world. To my credit, it only took until about four o'clock for me to resurface from email and IM for long enough to thank them.

Puncturing my reunion with the internet, literally, was a dose of a aspariginase, the fourth and final prong of my chemotherapy regime. Puncturing me in the hips, in fact; this one was administered intramuscularly to, I presume, spite me for being so happy with the Hickman line's promise of needle pricks no more. Side effects to watch out for: allergic reaction, treatable with antihistamine. Boring.

Laptop, internet, no allergic rashes, assurances granted by the University that my place will be available come September, back in contact with friends. A good day.

Recap III

The cardiologists originally planned to keep me in their department for about twenty-four to forty-eight hours of observation, before releasing me back up to haemo-oncology. The cardiology ward isn't a particularly nice place; it's a very Scottish place to go to die. I was the only patient younger than about fifty in the half-full twelve-bed ward. By the time morning came, there were another two beds occupied. Luckily, though, I wasn't to be held for another night's observation; everything went so well, in fact, that I was back up on ward 24 by lunchtime.

Which meant it was time for the main event, my first round of intravenous chemotherapy. I'd be on two main drugs for this, apparently, vincristine and daunarubicin, both to be injected into a line in my hand; apparently it's not such a big deal to ruin hand veins. Vincristine is a poisonous extract of the Madagascar periwinkle, it's the kind of thing people talk about when they mention "finding a cure for cancer in the rainforest." It's also neurotoxic, with effects ranging to tingling in the fingers when used correctly, to death in a fortnight from central neuropathy when used wrong. It's rarely used wrong. Daunarubicin is a beautiful ruby-red infusion of some other fantastically clever poison, but doesn't have anything like as cool a story as vincristine. I was administered both of these over the course of about twenty minutes, all in all, chasing a dose of anti-nausea medication.

Side-effect management is amazing, these days. Even ten years ago, I'd be looking at a month of sickness, vomiting, lack of appetite, loss of hair, one infection after another. I'll still get the hair loss, apparently there's only so much medical science can do for me in that regard, but as for the rest: breakfast round these parts is a cocktail of about eighteen little anti-everything pills. You wouldn't know to look at me that I'd spent a week and a half circulating a couple of the most insidious toxins ever produced by nature, and this looks set to continue until I go bald. If I'm exceptionally lucky, I'll be in the 5% of patients who dodge infection all the way to remission day.

The rest of Thursday was pretty straightforward. I was out of the immediate woods, the chemo was in, "get well soon" was turning into "stay well". I played Mario Kart. The system works.

Recap II

Monday morning was an early start. Because of how far things had progressed, and because there was just so much to be done, Dr. McDonald prescribed that we be back on the ward by eight thirty that morning. Fear of the combined dangers of rush hour and general McKernan incompetence got us up that bit earlier, though, got us in comfortably at 8am.

Not that anything was happening at 8am, of course. I had a couple of blood samples taken, a couple of meetings with the staff, and read a bit of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. Things started picking up at about 11am, when Dr. Tansy -- the consultant who'd be handling my care for the next month -- finished up with his morning rounds and came to have a chat with us. The day, for me, was to be one of tests and scans, to check just how riddled with cancer I actually was; the day for the doctors was to be one of finalising a treatment plan, in preparation for my un-riddling.

By this point, I really was starting to be quite unwell; it's doubtful I'd have spent another day without going to see the doctor, by Monday morning's state of paleness and breathlessness and lymph-node-ness. Blood counts came back with the expected huge increases in white cell counts and hints of anemia, none of the bits they listen to with a stethoscope sounded terribly good. A couple of chest X-rays later, and I was proud in the knowledge that I had litres of fluid compressing my lungs and a whole lot of something filling the top of my chest cavity. This pretty much put an end to any possibility of another night at home, so I was put up in a four-room ward for my first night of proper hospitalisation ever.

Tuesday morning came bright and early, at a slightly more reasonable 9am. Mum came up quite early to sit with me, and we went through the familiar routine of blood sampling and takings of vital statistics. Counts elevated a little bit further, neutrophils down, breathing a little bit worse, temperature maybe a little too high. I still didn't feel like I was dying, but the numbers told a different story. The doctors collated their notes and set to work, and mum headed off to tend to her own patients.

First order of business: isolation. Leukaemia is a disease of the white blood cells, specifically of the overproduction of non- or poorly-functioning ones at the expense of the rest. My strain in particular is caused by the massive overproduction of T-type lymphoblasts, which are an immature form of the T-type lymphocytes which should form pretty much the backbone of a healthy immune system. The treatment, the chemotherapy, works by killing lymphoblasts; unfortunately, this also kills all of the ones which should develop into healthy lymphocytes. The obvious end result is that my immune system gets nuked, and I get locked in a small clean room.

Once situated in my new digs (which are, it should be mentioned, actually quite pleasant), it was time to be getting on with the serious business of doctoring. My first 'proper' intervention of the week was the draining of my pulmonary effusion, a delightful little sack of about 1400ml of straw-coloured fluid which had leaked from my lymph nodes and crushed my left lung into a rather uncomfortably small space. As big a deal as it sounds, this was a straightforwards enough procedure that it could be done under a local anaesthetic and with me draped across my desk; twenty minutes and a huge measuring cylinder later, it was all over. Ta-da.

We'd been aware that I would be going into isolation for a while, but neither myself nor anyone else around was quite prepared for how rapid the transition would be. Personally I'd been expecting about a week, perhaps, during which I could invite my various friends up to see me before the long haul really got underway. It quickly became obvious that this wasn't actually in any way what reality would be looking like, so I texted Michelle to get her to organise a wee visit from some of the folks at University. Several hours later, she showed up with James and a slightly ill-looking Ewan. Ewan, as it turned out, had some weird but rather severe anemia brought on from drinking too much while flu-ridden, so he had to rush off to the A&E on doctor's orders. The rest of us just sat about and chatted about nothing in particular for a while, James sat on a beer can which he'd had knocking about inside of his bag, and everyone decided it would be a good idea to maybe go home. We'd be useless at organising meetings on anything of actual importance.

After that, it was bed time. Busy day.

... Though not, as it happened, nearly as busy as Wednesday. While draining the pulmonary effusion had helped a little, it wasn't nearly as pronounced in its effect as had been hoped; I was still coughing and panting and not looking so good. Next step: cardiology. The scans for this one were actually pretty cool; I got a contrast CT scan early in the afternoon, to get a proper look at the huge invisible hulks of my chest-cavity lymph nodes. Though I never personally viewed the images, I gather they were suitably impressive. After that, I got an echocardiogram done on my heart by the cardiology team who'd be working with me; it really was quite fascinating to see just how worried they were by the results, you know, from a scientific point of view.

Before anything could be done about my heart, however, it was time to get started on the infamous chemotherapy. My first appointment was with methotrexane, which is administered by intrathecal injection. To save you googling, that means by sticking a needle into my spine. How hardcore is that? Apparently there's been mix-ups in the past which led to another drug, vincristine, being given into the spine; this is invariably and rather ghoulishly fatal, and is regarded as a very important mistake to avoid. Accordingly, modern cancer units have a special room set aside just for methotrexane ITs, during which three doctors must be present to double- and triple-check the drug and dosage. There hasn't been a mistake in years.

For all the drama of the IT, it was over in twenty minutes and I was placed back in the terrified hands of the cardiologists. After some discussion over whether I was more likely to die in the short term of infection or heart failure, it was decided to go ahead with draining my pericardial effusion -- the fluid around my heart -- which had to be performed in a cardiology procedure room and monitored on the general coronary care ward. Due to the nature of the procedure, wherein a needle is inserted into the fluid sac around my beating heart, it is deemed necessary that the patient be conscious and delivering feedback detailing, to put it bluntly, whether it feels as though they've been stabbed in the heart. Thus it was that I found myself up to the gills on morphine and, mercifully, a memory suppressant whose name I don't recall. Ha ha.

I was still quite groggy due to the morphine, so I don't remember a lot of Wednesday night. Mum and dad hung around for a bit to make sure I didn't die unexpectedly (I didn't) and that the coronary care night staff knew how to deal with borderline neutropenic patients (they did), and went home. I slept until 10am the next morning, with rusty-looking pericardial fluid still draining into a bag by by side. Sweet dreams.

Recap

It's taken me over a week, but it's finally dawned on me that I really should be keeping a journal of this stuff, what with "events" being all the rage. In my defence, I only just secured internet access over the weekend, so blogging's been out of the question for most of the saga so far...

On Saturday the third of November, I slept in until one in the afternoon. I'd been out at The Union for most of the Friday, so this wasn't surprising in itself. What was surprising, however, was that family and friends had gathered to inform me that, as of 9pm that evening, I'd been diagnosed with leukaemia. There's a Wikipedia page on leukaemia, but it's a little dry. Basically, it's a blood cancer which mimics the effects of being a student: paleness, shortness of breath, predisposition to infections; it's a miracle we caught it at all. Anyway, my variety is the Acute Lymphoblasic Leukaemia; as the name suggests, this stuff moves pretty fast. First port of call: the hospital.

Saturday afternoon, then, I met with my mum and a Dr. McDonald of the Glasgow Southern General Hospital; he's of the softly spoken and compassionate school of medical personalities. Not too compassionate to stop him taking about five phials of my precious blood, mind you, but he assured me that it was necessary. He explained the diagnosis, talked us through what sort of treatment regime I'd be subjected to, that sort of thing. I thought all of this was quite fascinating, and mum got some reassurance about how used they were to dealing with ALL; I think that helped her quite a lot. Eventually we ran out of things to talk about and weekend staff to meet, so we headed back home and toured some of the relatives. I think the worst part of all of this so far has been putting everyone else through the shock and worry of it; you'd be amazed at the range of individual expression in human grief and distress. It was with relief, therefore, that I took a couple of hours to email everyone who I had obligations to at University, before and heading off to bed.

By the Sunday, I was showing a bit more strongly in the symptoms department. Shortness of breath walking on the flat, having to pause for air at the top of staircases. Another trip to the hospital gave me a clean bill of Not Going To Die Today, though, so we made the most of the afternoon. My brother, Francis, had come through from Edinburgh yesterday, so we drove him back through and went to the Dean Gallery to see the exhibition they had of Basil Spence's fabulous architectural adventures and misadventures. Apparently, he had a hand in the design of the modern section of my Physics building. We wandered about for a bit, met some of the local McKernans, enjoyed Edinburgh until I was too tired out, and headed back to Glasgow. As a final meal, so to speak, we collected my other brother (Gabriel) and little sister (Madeleine) and headed out for a curry. Turns out Sunday night in the West End isn't the best place for an intimate family gathering. C'est la vie. The curry wasn't even that great but, again, it was cool to have everyone together; it's pretty rare to have the family around one table these days -- we'll go to a nicer place when I get better. Back home afterwards to sleep in my own bed, and that was Sunday.

Monday, now, Monday was all go. Too much so to go into at this late hour; I do have cancer, after all. Stay tuned for tomorrow's gripping installment!

Still alive!