Janet's blog

 On the negative side, the aprepitant add-in didn't really help much with the nausea. It's a one-a-day thing and the first dose was at 3-ish before the chemo. Reasonable night with help of an early-morning rice cake then first  domperidone at 06:30 hours. However, took the first of the two home aprepitants at 3pm-ish on Day 2 then felt sick by 7pm and the same thing happened the next day. It's not doing the 24 hour shift, which is a shame as it seemed to the first time I went through this.  Next two nights, woke up  earlier and earlier feeling sick. Night 4, 02:30 hours found me marching up and down the kitchen like a horse with colic, yawning paroxysmally and waiting for an early-morning ondansetron to kick in.  That was the lowest point and thereafter I got through with domperidone alone, gradually getting more sleep. Day 7 was the first day with no anti-nausea meds and my chemo diary notes suggest it was OK - I made a cakey thing (Tarte Tintin) for elevenses ...

A most pronounced and gratifying increase in the WBCs circulating - from 0.97 on Monday to 1.59 on Wednesday. Chemo went ahead and has just finished. Cannula took three goes and a bucket of hot water. It eventually ended up in those very exposed inner wrist veins - a (slightly) more painful place to have the apparatus in place for a few hours and a bit squeamish-making - but I'm still watching it go in. (As of Thursday morning, there's none of the burning pain up my arm that I had for a few days last time, so pushing for newer veins in my left arm this time seems to have worked so far.)  I've been loaded up with a new regime of anti-sick pills (aprepitant, domperidone, dexamethasone) with ondensatron as an extra just in case. Also 5 injections of filgrastim to start on day 6 post chemo to stimulate those WBCs for fighting infection (trade name Zarzio - superhero name - hoping for superhero bone marrow ).  I'm waiting in the echoing atrium of the Macmillan Centre while m...

 Dr M. first phoned while I was trying to do something with some undetectable muscle during my Zoom Pilates lesson. She was trying to fill an empty slot by calling me early. As Pilates Teacher had specially rearranged my time so it came before the next bout of chemo, I had to ask Dr M. to ring back so I could return to my search for the elusive muscle. Cue severe twinge of anxious guilt at presuming this of highly-qualified, very busy, VIP in my life. When she rang later, it was with mostly good news. She had previously said that the Ca 125 often goes up after the first cycle of a second round of chemo before going down at a later stage. But after the first cycle my Ca 125 from yesterday was 40, down from 189 just pre-chemo. So she was pretty pleased with that. The not-so-good news was that my neutrophils (white blood cells) were only 0.97 and they  need to be >=1.0 for chemo to go ahead. She thought they were almost bound to go up enough by 2 September, so I should take th...

 Feeling much better now and waiting for telephone consultation with Dr M. I was off my beloved hot chocolate and sweet things for about two weeks, but the sweet tooth is back. I did try to stay off but just couldn't do it. We've been in Devon for a week and I had cake nearly every day for elevenses and tea. Day 6 was a bit of a washout - planned to play at making hanging things with slate and paint and 'gold' leaf but just couldn't summon up the energy and spent a lot of the day on the sofa instead. As usual the down time pays off in reading - have finally read Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge and Return of the Native. Enjoyed them so much more than Tess of the d'Urbevilles or Jude the Obscure which I did read long ago. (Lost patience with Tess and as others have said, J the O is just so relentlessly miserable.) Day 7 was the first day I felt like I achieved something - two and a half hours at the allotment, blog, wrote something for the Macmillan writing grou...