Chemo II Second cycle 2 September 2020

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 my lift home wends his way south - have been in the Centre for six hours and this is very much the fag end of the day. Everything is closed - cafe, advice centre and Living Room. Will soon make my way out to the UCLH street corner where the congestion charge doesn't apply and be swept home in my chauffeured ride. Said ride collected another scraped door last week thanks to Huckworthy Bridge and a 'lets go to Brent Tor by the back roads' moment. Brent Tor is, unlike most of Dartmoor hills and tors, not made of granite but a basalt volcanic undersea bubbling up, and has a church built on it. That must have been difficult, but in the main, graves proved even more difficult to sink into the rock and there aren't many. I digress.

As I walk, I pass the construction site where work has been going on all the time I've been coming here. It's to be a new Macmillan building with a proton beam accelerator and it occupies the best part of the block between the existing Centre and the main UCLH. Opening should be in 2020 but maybe delayed due to Covid-19; don't know if my treatment will move over there or if it's an additional facility. Maybe a proton beam accelerator needs a city block all to itself - it sounds like it might - possibly with a huge underground torus like CERN. The hoardings are starting to come down so we might find out soon.




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