So after getting a fairly early night, for me and heading to bed at about 11.30 and falling asleep almost straight away, I get my four hours and waken up, go to the loo and back to bed, but was not successful at getting back to sleep. Must have tried for about an hour before giving up and started to listen to music. I can never fall asleep when I'm listening to music (except when drunk sometimes) and watched a couple of episodes of The IT Crowd next thing I knew it was quarter past six, my alarm goes off in fifteen minutes!! So tried to make the most of it, turned off the music, put my head down and closed my eyes.
Fifteen minutes later "beep, beep, beep" alarm goes off, up showered and while I'm drying myself I feel my neck where it was swollen yesterday and guess what's there? Another couple of lumps, so by this stage I really wanted to get the higher dose of chemo, this can't go on getting all these lumps all over the place.
Left a little early to get over to hospital due to the heavier traffic with schools etc being back, but there didn't seem to be much of a difference compared to normal. Once there sat and read a little and then gave bloods and back to wait more, got a shout to come and get my weight and height taken, normally a sign of something new...
When I got round to the doctor he was asking how I was and I was explaining all the problems that I was having with the swollen glands and he said that they got the results back from the CT scan. The good news is that the larger glands have got smaller, but not by much. One example is that one was 6.6cm and is down to 6cm another was 1.5cm and down to 1.1cm and he was explaining that he would have expected these to be gone by now with the chemo. The bad news is that although the big ones are going down there are a lot more small ones popping up all over the place, aaallll over the place, so it was consistent with what I was telling him. He went on to start talking about increasing the chemo to a stronger one, R-CVP to R-CHOP and explained that now I WILL get the side effects loss of hair, nausea, constipation and other stuff too.
The smile that went up on my face must have confused him, he didn't quite know how to react. But I was almost sure that the glands would have went down and would have stayed on the same dose and I would have been very disappointed, but to hear that and that I'm finally getting something that's really going to work, or at least be more likely to work. I don't care about the side effects and looking forward to the hair coming off if I'm honest, this slow process of receding is taking too long.
I also brought up about my back being sore mostly in the morning and I told him that I did initially think it was the glands, but how it has been feeling the last couple of days feels more and more like a bone thing. He apologised and said "you've told me that a few times" and said that he'd book me an MRI, I told him there's no need to apologise, there's other stuff you've been working on and that I wasn't sure if I should get it sorted with him or with my osteoporosis doctor. It wouldn't have mattered either way apart from time scale, so I'm getting an urgent MRI. What are your guesses at what that is? My thinking is that it's one of the ribs being squashed in or pushed while I'm lying down and that's what's causing it, just hope it's not a crack or anything like that.
After hospital I had preorganised to meet up with an old school friend who was back for a few days, so I popped into work to update them on the shenanigans and then went over to the lagan to wait for him to come. Somehow he slipped past me, only by about a minute or two though, but caught up with him when he was looking at wedding bands (rings). We had a nice meal in California Coffee and he wouldn't let me pay anything. After I was running out of time and needed to head back to the hospital for the chemo.
I went in and told them I was back expecting that I might have to wait a bit longer till a bay was ready for me but they took me straight away. Got a red chemo and was told that my urine would be a bit red for up to 48 hours and then the other two chemos, one made my nose very tingly and then I got my dreaded piriton... followed by the retuximab. Everything went well and just sat and watched The IT Crowd on the Kindle Fire. Once it was over got all my extra meds for the next week or so and went to the loo. I had forgotten being told about the red urine and didn't think it would have been so quick to get into it, but that brought another smile to my face, I guess if the nurse didn't tell me about it I'd be shitting myself.
I had been thinking on the way down out of the hospital that I was going to walk and was, then decided I'll get a bit to eat and wait. Phoned M+D and they were in Lisburn and told them I was just going to walk home, of course they don't listen and say they'll be over in 30 mins, "I'm walking" ok we'll be over in 20. "no, I'm walking home".
So I finally got round to walking home, and felt pretty good for it cleared out the piriton from my system a bit, so that was one positive and on the way home got a call from another friend and chatted with him from about half the way home, after I missed his call and phoned him back, actually using some of my 3000 minutes for a change. Once home I went to the toilet and the red was gone, and about 10 minutes later M+D where back and weren't too happy I walked, but then they realised that I was perfectly fine and they settled. Ok maybe something could have happened, but I wanted to walk and so I did.
The evening has been spent writing the 2 blogs and stopped to watch a bit of the Ulster game and then off to watch the Germany V Austria World Cup qualifier, Germany won 3-0 but started getting tired and a bit of a sore head, nothing too bad though, so I'm guessing after this I'm probably going to get a bite to eat and go to bed. The fun part will be tomorrow I guess....