So here we are my friends, the atom bomb of chemotherapy. It doesn't get stronger than this. The idea behind a stem cell or bone marrow transplant is they destroy your body with a seven day course of high dose chemotherapy and then a day after transplant the stem cells they harvested from you earlier (or from a donar) to reboot or rescue your body. Think of it as when your computer freezes or your internet is playing up and you switch it off for 30 seconds and switch it back on again with the hopes all problems have been wiped clean and it starts working properly.
I can't sugar coat this or disguise it in mythological analogies, its brutal. It's by far the hardest most physically and mentally challenging thing I have ever experienced and by all accounts I had it pretty easy, in my usual viking vanguard nature I charged to the front and was discharged 14 days early.
The first seven days as they administer the chemo are fairly uneventful apart from a reaction to one of the the drugs which made me feel like I'd submerged my head in a vat of chilli oil and snorted it into my sinuses and swallowed greedily. To the left is the effect. I either had one or two types of chemotherapy a day through my PIC line you have daily blood tests and have your vitals (blood pressure, temperature, heart rate and oxygen levels) taken every four hours, morning and night. You also need to monitor your fluid input and output every day, you need to consume at least two litres of fluids and urinate them out to prevent them putting you on IV fluids or giving you diuretic tablets. Apart from the lack of sleep being woken up at 2 am to have doses of chemo and your vitals checked it was a gentle walk in Hyde park compared to what was to come. There were a few days such as below where I was just fed up with being hooked up to a drip for the majority of the day but that was just tiredness from being woken up every 4 hours and sheer boredom. (anyone who says only boring people get bored have never been stuck in hospital with a foggy chemo brain with the inability to concentrate on anything longer than a gold fishes memory span...
Day zero they call it, the day when they press the reset button and give you the stem cells back, those wonderful building blocks of life. Come on I'm like a 4 year old with a new lego set. I want to build, build build and get out of this place!
Then the waiting, the slow decline into sickness as the chemotherapy kicks in. I'll keep it frank and honest. First you run your fingers through your hair and clumps fall out, that's the first signs its kicking in. Now I've prided myself that up until this point my powerful viking samsonesque beard had never fallen out but this time, well...
Beard gone but vigour remained until the real side effects started. Imagine food poisoning, endless food poisoning running to the toilet every 15 minutes in a toilet chemo rotation of mouth to arse (I'd said I'd be frank) This lasted for me at least two weeks relentlessly but I've heard for other it lasts a lot longer. Even more frank is they can't give you anything for those symptoms until stool samples come back, which takes 5 days. I was in a shared ward so I had the added embarrassment of the 5 other people on my ward queuing up behind me as I rushed back and fourth to the toilet. Then there's the mucositis. You're unable to regenerate internal lining of any part of the body hence the food poisoning symptoms. In addition to this your mouth and throat become so sore you can barely swallow water. Mouth ulcers, change in taste because you have no taste buds and general lethargy, partly due to lack of food but also chemo fatigue.
Then there's visitors, when your neutropenic (no immune system) your put in isolation and visitors have to wear aprons gloves and masks. You crave for human interaction but when your running to the toilet every 15 mins, your mouth is so sore you can't speak and you're so tired you can't lift your head off the pillow. It's hard because people have made the effort to see you you and you feel you need to entertain them while you are there but some days you just have to say no I had to go a whole week with no visitors because I didn't want people to see me in that state.
Every day I would get up have a shower and say the affirmations "Strength, power, healing. Strength, power healing" I got out of bed and forced myself to eat timing my pain medication to sync up with my meals. This is the mental part of the battle, don't act like a patient, fight and will yourself better. Your mind is so powerful, use it! Any way I ended up looking like this in the end:
I had a few raised temperatures which they take very seriously because a normal cold can kill you in that state so they put you on antibiotics straight away as you have no immune system then they take blood samples to check what the infection is but these can't be taken from your PIC Line just in case that's the source of infection.
On my day of leaving the girl in the room opposite me had an infection but was in a catch 22 situation where the chemotherapy had damaged her liver and kidneys so they were unable to give her the antibiotics that she needed to fight the infection because they would have given her organ failure and killed her so they had to leave her to god's will. I still wonder about that girl and it reminds me how lucky I was that my body tolerated the drugs so well.
I've rambled on far too long but 11 days post stem cell transplant my neutrophils jumped to 5.8 and they discharge you if you're anything above 1 so I got my freedom. I may elaborate some other details but I think that's enough for now.
