Monday 22 February 2010

Meeting with the doctor & first ABVD treatment.

So I met with my doctor on the 18th and we discussed my options for treatment. I had 2 options - the clinical trial or the standard treatment. Standard treatment would be 6months of the ABVD chemo and then possibly radiotherapy. The trial involves 3months of ABVD treatment followed by a PET scan and if the PET scan shows no more signs of cancer I would be randomly selected by a computer to either recieve no more treatment at all or radiotherapy. The aim of the trial is discover the effectivness of PET scans to see if they can reduce the treatment people need so they don't have to have any unecessirly.
I opted for the clinical trial as it would mean hopefully only half of the chemotherapy I would have got just having the standard treatment. If the PET scan result did show cancer still then I would simply have another month of chemo then radio therapy so ultimately it is still less chemo than the standard amount.
Once all the treatment is finished I will have to make regular trips back to the hospital for scans etc which is very reassuring as there is a chance the cancer could come back so I'm sure it would be spotted straight away.


The next day on the friday, I had my first have of the first cycle of ABVD. (1 cycle is 2 treatments which are given every 2 weeks. Complicated I know!) I had to have it in North Tees for some reason even though I will be getting the rest of my treatment in Hartlepool where I live. Got to the hospital at 11 and went to the chemo unit. There were a circle of chairs in the middle of the room and 1 lady was hooked up too a drip and the rest of the people were just sat waiting...the main thing I noticed were that they were all about 30 years older than me. How depressing.

Had the cannula put into my hand - a little uncomfortable at first cos it was right near my wrist but it soon wore off. Had to do a urine sample to make sure I was pregnant. This was ridiculously hard with only one hand! Lol. Went and sat back in the "circle". A lady came round with "snack bags" which contained sandwiches, fruit, juice, crisps and biscuits. WOO FREE DINNER!

Soon after the nurse took me to the corner of the room to start the drugs. 2 of them were injected (I cant remember which ones exactly). 1 of them was a lovely red colour which later made my wee reddy orange :) The next one was given via a drip but didnt take very long and then the last one was a large bag of fluid that had to be given by drip. The nurse said it would take about an hour to go through but it may hurt my arm going in so if it did then they would slow it down to ease the discomfort. It started off a little uncomfortable but it wore off and after an hour it was finished. The nurse finished off by flushing some more salt water through and then I was ready for home. I was given a chemo record book to keep note of all the side effects I get and to note down all my hospital appointments etc.

Got home and fell asleep on the couch for a few hours. Woke up and felt fine - I was expecting to be feeling really ill but I wasnt at all! Didn't even go to bed till 1am, I was just like normal.

The whole day didnt turn out to be as bad as I thought it would be. Apart from being the youngest there by far, everything was ok :)

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