The history of the healing

The first course of chemotherapy

I was told not to take any medications except for those prescribed by doctors. They repeated it a few times and said that it was extremely important. I wasn’t to eat fried food, nuts, spicy food, berries, and I had to be cautious with fresh fruit and vegetables. Probably there were some other food restrictions but I don’t remember. I hung a piece of paper on the wall next to my bed, on which my blood type and the detailed treatment were written. In case the treatment was changed, they brought me another paper, and I hung it instead of the old one.

Throughout the treatment I was told to keep a diary in which I had to take notes of my daily temperature, blood pressure, how much liquid I took in, how much came out of me, whether there was defecation and if it was, what kind - normal or liquid. I used to write down how much liquid I was taking during the day. Whenever they gave me a drip of 300 ml - I used to write down "+300", whenever I drank a cup of tea - I used to write down "+250". Then I counted how much liquid got into my body during the day. I also counted the amount of liquid that went out of me. I was given a special container which I put into the toilet and... You know... Then I watched how many milliliters there were and emptied it. Then I wrote it down. This was necessary in order to understand whether I was dehydrated or conversely, whether there was liquid retention in my body.

They brought me a tripod (a thing on wheels with droppers hanging on it), hung a bunch of stuff on it, and attached it with wires to the catheter in my neck. This catheter was used to drip chemo and a bunch of other medications needed to minimize the side effects of chemo. They also prescribed plenty of pills that I had to buy myself. I mean, my mother or husband bought and brought them. Some pills I had to start taking immediately. And that's where the help of that friend who had written the most adequate message that the world had ever seen could have come in handy but it didn't. Either my mother used to bring me the medications or the nurses used to lend me them. Later, when I had medications enough for a small pharmacy, they borrowed the medications from me in order to lend them another patients.

Every day they took blood from my vein. This way they monitored my health condition and corrected my treatment. As I said before, my veins are weak. Even when they are normal, they are hardly visible. A week later, taking blood became a problem. There were bruises on my hands. I was told what ointment to put on them, and it helped a little. Some veins didn’t let blood come out. It happened that a nurse came to take blood, stuck a needle into one vein - and blood didn’t flow. She stuck it into the other vein – same there. She tried another arm. Sometimes it took a lot of time. When the nurse found the vein which the blood could still flow out. Every three days there were different nurses, so I had to show them the vein they could take blood out of. My mother never got used to that sight and used to go out of the ward every time so as not to see it. The nurses with their professionalism are amazing. They take blood from veins like mine every day, and I am not the only one in the department, there are many of us.

I will describe the schedule of a day as I remember it. At about 5:40, an orderly came to change the garbage bag in the toilet. At around 6:00, a nurse came to put some kind of dropper. Then a few more times to turn off one dropper and put the other. Then a doctor on duty came and asked me how I was feeling. At 8:00, my attending physician came to work and came in to see me too. At about 9:00, a nurse came to take my blood. From 9:30 to 10:00, an orderly brought my breakfast. From 11:00 to 12:00, the head of the department came. Then one more attending physician. There were two attending physicians, one higher in rank and one lower in rank. When I was in surgery getting a biopsy, there was the same system. Apparently, that's how it works at this hospital. Then the nurse came again with some droppers. The orderly came one more time before lunch to clean my ward and take the empty dishes after breakfast. At 13:00 it was lunch time. From 14:00 to 17:00 it was nap time, and no one came to see me unless there were any urgent droppers or procedures. At 17:00, there was some afternoon snack. At around 18:00 there were droppers again. I think at 19:00 it was dinner time, or a little bit later, I don't remember. From 21:00 to 22:00 there was an evening doctor’s round. And in between 100 times a day the nurses came by to give me some medicine or put a dropper. And the attending doctors came several times a day to check on my condition.

They were carrying out chemo and injected some other medicines 5 days around the clock. Wherever I was going, I took the tripod with me. When I went to the toilet, I was holding the tripod in one hand, the stick in the other hand and hobbled. I couldn't lean only on the tripod because I was afraid that it would roll (it was on wheels), and I would lose my balance. The doctors had warned me about the toilet, that people often fall there and get hurt. That's why I was careful and held on the handrails, which there were quite a lot of. During the first chemo session I used to go to toilet 15-20 times a day. And the desire was so sudden and I could hardly handle it, so I had to stand up and go there immediately. Many people ask, how I could sleep all night and not to get stuck in all the wires from the catheter. I'll tell you. I was sleeping a maximum of 2 hours between trips to toilet. During that time, I didn't manage to sleep soundly. Then I got used to sleeping carefully. But it’s good to go to toilet frequently. We joked with my mom that those were “Domestoses” that went out. We read on the Internet that chemo cleans bad cells out and they come out with the urine. It reminded us of the advertising where the cleanser takes the germs away with it. We called my cancer cells the “domestoses”. I dreamed of sleeping at least 3 hours. Already during the second chemo session my dream would have come true. In the meantime, I was getting up 20 times a day to get rid of my “domestoses”.