It’s in the bones. Part three

 The Queen Elizabeth hospital is about twelve years old, an impressive blue/white steel and glass structure with the appearance of a shopping mall on the ground floor and a pristine series of corridors feeding patient wards and offices above it. 

I’m in room 29 on ward 625. The corridor on 625 is around 100metres long if you include the isolation ward in which my own room is located. There are signs on the walls imploring patients to stay as fit as possible during treatment so I have resolved to walk ten circuits, that’s 200 metres, three times a day, after breakfast lunch and dinner. That should deliver me 6km a day which is a reasonable footfall of 10,000 steps or thereabouts. 

I came onto the ward Sunday and, after a series of tests, including bloods and covid, I start my chemo treatment on Tuesday as part of a six day course followed by a bone marrow stem cell transplant on “day zero”.

Day zero - 6. Pretty uneventful day. Three hours on a drip and three 2km corridor walks interrupted only by lunch, dinner and a little tv.

Day zero - 5. Should have been five hours on a drip but ended up as nearly eight. I think the boredom might kill me before the treatment or the disease does. Managed two 2km corridor walks and felt no after effects from the chemo. Shower wasn’t working this morning and reported after I’d done the flannel dance over the sink.

Day zero - 4 see Day zero -5.

Day zero - 3. Only one chemo session today between 10am and 1pm. Still felt it though; dull stomach ache which I’m hoping to relieve by doing a little walking. Was offered morphine but I don’t think that’s the way to go. Tomorrow’s chemo session is apparently twelve hours with some dodgy side effects including shaking and high temperature. My temperature tonight is already 37.5 so this looks likely to happen.

Day zero - 2. Biggest chemo session so far. On a drip from 8.30 to half past midnight. Chemo and antibiotics and anti-rejection drugs. The chemo is called the rabbit or anti-thymocyte globulin (atg). It’s up for 12 hours on its own because it has to go through slowly because of the major side effects. To think I used to worry about aspirin. Two hours in I had a reaction; fever and chills and a very raised temperature. Lousy day, bit of a write of although I did squeeze a 2k corridor walk in at 7.

Day zero - 1. ATG again and started on the drips at 6am. Threw up first so was given an anti-emetic. I was up till one in the morning until yesterday’s poisons stopped dripping into me. No time for exercise today but maybe I’ve left a big enough impression that the staff can still occasionally hear the ghostly slap,slap,slap of slipper on linoleum. Both my chest lines are occupied so I’ve had to have a cannula inserted into my left hand. So I now have splint on my right hand and a cannula on the back of my left. I have the runs; another chemo side effect so I don’t know how I’m going to wipe my bum and not risk infection. Figured it out. Took the splint out and very gently stroked myself with toilet paper, dispensed in independent small rectangles which is just morally wrong. I gently washed my broken hand turning the whole process into some highly organised Japanese style ritual. I hope it doesn’t become a fetish.