For my first chemotherapy session I could have prepared myself mentally and physically by going on a cheap long-haul flight. First you are booked in by cheery ground staff in a waiting room who ask you to wait for the 9.50 call. The call is made, you stride down a well-lit corridor to where a group of ladies in smart uniforms tell you that they are going to look after you. They direct you to a reclining chair. Just as you are relaxing, they roll up a trolly with a load of liquids. Unlike the inflight service trolly these are all in neat little sealed bags.
I have been told by nurses that they are always on the lookout for a good vein when they are on the job. I had some great looking possibilities on my right hand. Thus easily plugged into a savoury first course of saline solution to be accompanied by a side order of anti-emetics with an amuse-bouche of a mild sedative effect. Not unlike your first G and T at thirty thousand feet. The main course was a bag of some wonder drug stuff originally derived from the bark off a yew tree. Americans started running out of yew trees and started to make it in labs. I was dozing off with all this. Every 15 minutes the nurse would drop by and ask to take my pulse. I kept telling her she could have it for as long as she liked, provided I could get it back.
Meanwhile the next attack for any more cancer cells was coming in the form of a bolus. Yes, I was worried when they told me that. Proud of my great grandfather’s Argentine heritage as I am, I do draw the line at being clobbered by anti-cancer drugs thrown across the room on a whirling rope. But it is a ‘bolus’ not a ‘bolas’. A method of getting a slow-release medication jabbed under your skin.
It was around my third session of chemo that a nice lass with a sheaf of papers clamped to a clipboard turned up. She asked if I would like to be part of a research project.
‘What are you researching?’ I asked.
‘The possible phenomena of chemo linked brain fog’. Was the answer.
When people use the word phenomena one is always impressed. A university was trying to gather data on mental performance during chemo treatment. I had to do assorted online tricks every so often as a measure of my cognitive functions. There were some big words being used here and I was easily fascinated. I was happy for them to test my brain for memory impairment. The lady smiled and left me a set of papers to take home and read.
This is where bright people often make a mistake. One day later I phoned up the clinic.
‘Hello, you know those papers asking about the memory impairment project. Yes I did forget to take them with me…..’
