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.