16. My first experience of chemotherapy

Ok, I cheated. Nevertheless, all things considered and every other cliche along those lines, I’m proud of myself and Christmas Eve.

Woke up and took half a lorazepam. I hate taking new tablets. I can get a side effect just entering a pharmacy! Nothing seemed to happen. I’m used to diazepam and its gently mellowing effect. I’d packed my bag for every eventuality - distraction, constructive activity, panic management...I left little to chance. Of course it weighed a ton in addition to my ever-weighty handbag.

Maureen picked me up, concerned about rush hour traffic and more roadworks and we were there, parked and waiting, by 8.40. I took another half lorazepam. More people started arriving, almost all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, which should have been reassuring but made me feel a bit resentful. A nurse came to collect me and took me into suite A where my name was on the whiteboard, along with my treatment details - and surrounded by other chemotherapy patients. Aargh! All I had to say was ‘I thought I was going to be treated in the overflow room’ and off we went, no questions asked.

First I took my remaining lorazepam. Still nothing. No gentle buzz, no reassuring calm. Nothing. It took a while for it to register that ‘nothing’ was nothing short of a miracle. I sat and I chatted with the nurse who injected vast syringes of steroids, anti-nausea drugs and eventually the red poison of EC treatment. I chatted with Maureen. Someone came round with a trolley full of Christmas refreshments and I ate Pringles and drank apple juice. Who was this woman?

The whole thing went quite quickly and smoothly since my veins for once decided to cooperate instead of dancing about. Then it was over. I even asked if I could stay till the drip was empty as this was easy hydration! Then, out came the cannula from my ‘perfect vein’ and I just had to wait for the pharmacist while Maureen popped off for a coffee. It was a long wait. It strikes me as odd that the pharmacists in oncology had to go down to the Boots franchise to get two measly lorazepams but that’s how they are organised.

I was fine when I got home, later had a benzo-nap and stayed resting for the remainder of the day. No bruising, no soreness, no nausea (and I had enough anti-sickness pills for a dozen patients), red pee. Otherwise, nothing. I realised that, perhaps for the first time in decades, I felt what I believe is ‘normal.’ It felt strange and it felt good. But I had no idea what to expect from now on. So far, I’d catastrophised myself into ill-health and been proved wrong. I’d just have to wait and see, first if the anti-nausea treatments worked, then if I’d get my steroid tummy, then if I’d get steroid withdrawal which has laid me flat in the past. More than anything though, I’m embarrassed to say I waited for the nausea to come.