258. First the good news

Great news. My kidney has been restored, my lung nodule had disappeared (so you can have infection/inflammation and be oblivious to it) and everything from my thorax to my abdomen remains the same. My blood marker has risen to 18.7 so that’s all stable, and my tumour markers have risen to 7, still within safe limits. My other blood results, way beyond my comprehension, are good. 

The bad news: I have to have another MRI to compare my tumour with September. I also have gained a new skin met and some of the others are hardening again - during chemo. It may mean I have to change my chemotherapy but I’ll wait for the MRI results first. Maybe the eye changes are to do with reacting to the tumour, not more cancer.

I also had my 4th vaccination, my booster. My GP practice of course couldn’t accommodate me as I need it at a specific time, ideally halfway through my week off. They advised me to try the Elland Road Hub. Well, I remembered the day and a half of not getting through but I tried again and got straight through, She was really good, understood my problem, looked up my records and said my immunity ‘ended’ Thursday so would I like an appointment Friday???? I was gobsmacked. I had clinic and bloods to do but she suggested 2.35 and Lisa yet again drove me. I was fine driving to the hospital but the thought of the Armley gyratory left me quivering in horror. It is close to where I worked so I needed to use it a lot and I’d say 50% of the time I found myself heading back to town or stuck on the motorway because I got in the wrong lane. No way was I up to driving there. I was gripping my wrist with Lisa driving - too many lorries and big vans either side of us!

When we got there, Lisa asked if she could park on the road, close to the entrance, as I was having chemotherapy. Well, I was treated like royalty (or a poor frail woman) after that. I registered, moved on to the next bay for a medical person to do my preliminary check, a steward brought forward a chair so someone must have rung through! I was told I was having Moderna this time so there was much less likelihood of a repeat of the mild flu-y symptoms last time. Then I moved on, was injected and told that, as I wasn’t driving I needn’t wait. The great thing was seeing so many children there, mostly high school, waiting after they’d been vaccinated. I could imagine school saying you can have last period off if you pop into the vaccination centre on the way home! AND Lisa was waiting right outside.

I felt fine after that. The irony was that, within an hour, my GP practice rang to say Dr L had given the go-ahead for them to offer me the vaccine at my convenience (not had a reply to my complaint yet but maybe it’s had an effect?) Then maybe 11.30, my skin began to crawl so I decided I’d get to bed and try to sleep through it. I woke half an hour later with rigor. Fortunately I recognised it from when I was admitted with neutropoenic sepsis in 2019 so I didn’t make the mistake of thinking it was a weird panic attack. I used the relaxation technique from Progressive Hypnosis and managed to stop the violent shakes after an hour or so but the inner shakes took longer. My Fitbit showed I was asleep but actually I was just mentally relaxed as I fought the shakes. Then I started hallucinating. It was totally surreal. I didn’t know if I was awake or asleep and couldn’t move. I stayed like that till 7am, after which, with a glimmer of daylight, it felt safe to sleep. What a night. I can safely say I have never felt so ill. I’ve been worse, as in 2019, but then I didn’t feel ill, I just was ill.

When I woke I was utterly exhausted but felt that ‘crisis’ had passed. Anne popped by in the afternoon so I had a chat with her, door open and safely distanced and I was able to give her her Christmas present at last. I’m still in bed, obviously a lot better, no repetition of the rigors. The oncology nurse rang me this morning to check I was ok and seems happy enough so I think that’s over now - and better than catching covid.

And that’s my life - a catalogue of medical stuff. I need some more people. But I have two more weeks before I can unleash myself on the outside world - and I don't know all the rules because they’ve never applied to me.