The history of the healing

The withdrawal from the first chemo

The hardest time is not the chemo itself but withdrawal from it. The doctors knew what side effect would most likely occur on what day. I'll tell you what I remember. It was as if all my organs began to work with a creak. I reminded myself of a rusty machine.

Nevertheless, I became a little more alive. I was no longer lying around all day but sitting. My mother and I watched series and old Soviet movies.

It was also time for an important event: bathing. I was very glad that the summer was so cold that I could do without bathe often, and in general I can’t stand hot weather very well. It was June and people were wearing jackets. That's why I was able to make it this long without a shower. But it was impossible to put it off any longer, so I decided, with my mother's help, to try to take a shower.

Fortunately, the shower was the holes in the floor but not a shower stall. This obstacle would be difficult to overcome. As usual, I walked into the shower with the limp stick and the tripod with droppers. I held on to the handrail with one hand. My mother squeezed some shower gel on a washcloth, and I began to soap myself extremely carefully, so as not to get the catheter wet in any way. It was a good thing that I shaved my head: it would be impossible to wash my hair. I couldn’t reach some body parts such as my back, and my mother helped me. Then I wiped off the foam with a wet towel, but not too wet, so that the water wouldn't get into the catheter. The phrase "take a shower" meant that I had to wash everything but below the waist, where there was no catheter.

After the first shower I changed my clothes. By that time, I figured out that I could put on socks and pants myself. That was wonderful! I could change my robe for a tracksuit. I only wore sweaters that buttoned up. It was impossible to wear anything that I had to put over my head because the wires from the catheter in my neck lead to the droppers.

Already at the end of the chemo, I I began to have stomatitis. I showed my mother a cartoon about Masyanya, the episode where she had the stomatitis ("The Giving Back"). It was painful for her to talk, and Hrundel was bothering her with questions about her health. My mother understood the hint and tried not to ask me anything. There was a very unpleasant feeling in my mouth, my mouth cavity was covered with some horrible mucus. My cheeks were a little bit swollen, and it hurt to talk and chew. The doctors said there was nothing they could do about it; no medication could be given for it. I could only rinse my mouth 100 times a day, which I did. Or rather I tried to do because it was too hard for me to go to the toilet 100 times a day. The food became tasteless. However, I did not suffer from this for long, as I soon began to have digestive problems, and I was forbidden to eat or drink anything except water. I was hooked up to intravenous nutrition. It had enough calories to satiate me. The doctors were surprised that I didn’t feel the hunger. They said that many people wanted to eat anyway. But I understood that in fact they didn’t want to eat, they just wanted something tasty. It was just the moral aspect, I could handle it.

I had to abstract myself away, looking at the endless photos of food in social networks. I reminded myself that I couldn't eat it anyway, even if there was no intravenous feeding. I just had to put up with it for a few months. But one day I did get angry and took a picture with the dropper. I posted the photo with the comment, "A lot of people post pictures of food. I decided to post one too." I joked that I was eating fried potatoes with pickles intravenously.

My temperature went up. The doctors told me to call them anytime it got high. My mom wrote them messages on Saturday at 3 a.m. and they told me what to do. I became a better opinion of the doctors. I can't even imagine to what extent you should be altruistic to have a job like that.

I had a headache, and I couldn't take painkillers. My mother bought a “star” at the drugstore (Vietnam star balm, a pungent-scented ointment. It’s popular in Russia for headaches), it helped for a while.

Daily blood tests revealed a problem with one organ and then another. The treatment was often adjusted. Some droppers were canceled, others were added. They told me to start taking certain pills urgently. My mother went to the drugstore and bought them. My thrombocytes, or my hemoglobin, or something else dropped. I was given donor blood. At that moment I saw donors in a different light. I knew some donors, but I hadn't realized before what an important job they were doing. I looked at photos of donors on social media with hashtags of the hospital where I lay and thought, "Maybe I am receiving exactly his or her blood transfusion now?" Then I wrote to all the donors I knew (there were only two of them) thanking them for what they did.

On the fifth or seventh (I don’t remember now) day my leukocytes dropped. The doctors said that the norm was 7, and I had only 0,2. This is called agranulocytosis. Usually, at this time you can only eat a strictly limited number of products. But I was not allowed to eat anything because I was still on intravenous nutrition. I was forbidden to leave the ward because any microbe could be fatal. People could only come to my room in a mask, a medical gown and a cap. People look very funny in such an equipment.

I was very dizzy. I went to the toilet holding on to the walls.

Before the intravenous nutrition, I was allowed to drink one cup of coffee a day. Now I asked my mom to drink coffee because I wanted at least to smell it.

But then things gradually got better. The liver, kidneys and everything else began to work properly again, one by one the pills and drops were canceled. The stomatitis was gone. My leukocytes count went up to 2. The doctors began to stimulate their growth with medicines. They cancelled my intravenous nutrition and let me slowly begin to eat. Very cautiously, terrified of complications, I drank black tea without anything and waited for a while. After an hour I made sure everything was okay and decided to eat. The first meal after 2 weeks of intravenous nutrition was porridge for infants. It was such a divine delight!