It turns out that my roommate is not Romanian, but in fact Ukrainian. Not knowing either language I hadn't noticed, his accent had sounded quite smooth and unlike the hard Russian accents I have got used to. Perhaps because he is from close to Hungarian border in Western Ukraine, and definitely from the non-Russia loving area as when I asked if he was Ukrainian he said yes then held his fingers in a gun pose and said "Putin, boom boom!". Hard to disagree with him there.
I didn't write for the last two days because frankly, I felt like shit. Around 8pm on Thursday, my nurse wheeled in an IV pole and said "let me introduce you to your friend for the next 36 hours". In went in drip containing Uromitexan, the "antidote" to the upcoming chemo drug, overnight.
The night went well, I started to read a fantastic cycling novel "The Rider", which is about a Dutch cyclist taking part in a 150km race in France, it is very well written and we discover the intricacies of not only cycling tactics, but the thoughts going on in his head, both about other riders his mental challenges along the way. For a competitive cyclist it is a must read.
Getting comfortable in bed was a little tricky because of, you know...the minging pipes sticking of my neck. But I settled down to watch "Shakespeare in Love", it was fun but I found myself surprised to be teary eyed towards the end. This didn't used to happen to me, but I've found that having kids and perhaps going through what I have, I feel more comfortable being honest about my emotions. Of course it could be the drugs.
8:45 am, Friday morning, in goes the Cyclophosphamide: the chemo drug. But I still feel fine, although I need to wheel an IV pole (see photo) around every time I need a wee, which is all the time, because I'm being infused with 4 litres of drugs in saline and I have to drink 3-4 litres of stem a day (which is pretty normal for me anyway).
II feel fine for the first 6 hours, I have a great appetite. I even read Amy a few pages of Wind in the Willows to Amy over Skype. Poor Amy has had to come home from school after vomiting onto her desk, she's picked up a virus, so Katie couldn't come to visit me. Rosie is packed off to the grandparents for the interim, to keep the thing isolated. I'm 200km away, so it's hard to arrange visits, so better that not everyone gets ill. Around 3pm the nausea sets in and I get something to ease it, it doesn't seem to go away, I keep drinking lots of water to help, it sort of sits there in the background making it hard to be comfortable. Moving about helps. I try to turn each trip to the loo into an outing, a challenge moving about with the IV pole. Around 9 they change the drip and I get something for the nausea which allows me to sleep until 2am. The nausea is rising, I try to manage it, but despite some more medication I'm emptying my stomach at 3am. All this time I'm wondering: I wonder if throwing up is actually going to be a relief, normally you feel nauseous when your body is wanting to expel something poisonous from your stomach (pints of cider come to mind), but this is in my blood. So I am expecting to still feel nauseous after throwing up. To my surprise I feel a lot better. It's funny how easily the body is fooled. It's temporary though and I'm up again twice more in the next few hours, the last time someone else is in the bathroom, but I hold out.
Saturday morning
My doctor comes with good news, the results from my bone marrow aspiration are in. I am MRD- (Minimal Residue Disease). In his smear test, he measures less than 3% plasma cells (I don't actually know what normal is), and the lab tests (I think this is blood) show no sign of myeloma cells even with the most sensitive measurement. As I understand, MRD is the name for small numbers of cancer cells which are left in the bone marrow after or during treatment and is the major cause for relapse. So it seems to be a good sign, but I just don't know enough yet about how significant it is. Hold the Champagne!
The nausea is still there, I manage the soft part of a piece of bread over an hour. Later I manage soup and pea stew, but leave the meat. The chemo drip is removed and within a few hours I'm feeling tired, but back to normal. I say goodbye to my friend the IV pole and take great joy in walking to the loo in 3 seconds.
Katie arrives, but very tired. This time she hasn't be painting all night, but going the grouting between the tiles she's fixed in various places in the house. We enjoy being together, but don't talk a lot. I recall a scene from Pulp Fiction where Mia and Vincent are in Jack Rabbit Slim's getting their "bloody as hell" steak and burger and the $5 shake, followed by the "uncomfortable silence". Mia says "don't you hate that?", "why do we feel is necessary to yak about bullshit in order to feel comfortable?", "that's when you know you feel really special, and you can shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably share silence".
After she leaves, I take a sleep for an hour. Enjoy an hour with "The Rider" and around 10:30pm settle down to watch Spectre until 1am. I'm feeling more and more like myself again.
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