The history of the healing

The fourth course of chemotherapy

And so, I entered final straight. It was the first of August; I remember it till now. I didn’t limp any more. Well, I did sometimes but just out of habit. I had to learn to walk straight.

My mother didn’t spend the night with me anymore for a long time, but just came to visit me. So, she started taking her things home.

I drew all the beautiful views from the windows of the hospital and a lot of my photos from different trips. I longed to go drawing plain air so much. And the prospect of going to do it shimmered in the near distance.

The fourth chemo was the hardest. The doctors say that the first and the fourth courses are the worst. As for the first one, it is because the illness is still strong, and as for the fourth one it is because the body is tired. And they were right. My stomatitis started already on the third day of the chemo, although it usually started on the fifth day or even during the withdrawal from the chemo. Moreover, it was tougher. Everything hurt in my mouth, my cheeks were swollen, I looked like a hamster. It was painful to talk, to chew, the mouth opened only a little. All that I could do with this was to rinse my mouth 100 times a day and wait for the leukocytes to fall and then rise. Stomatitis passes when leukocytes rise. But it was far from that. It was the most severe attack of stomatitis during the entire treatment.

All of my organs hurt again. I talked to them in turn again, told them that the last fight was the most difficult. I had a headache, and I couldn’t drink painkillers. “The Vietnam star” ointment didn’t help for long. I remember the situation when it did not help at all. Then my mother smeared almost half of my head (it's easy to do this without hair), massaged it – and everything went away. Mother's love has strong effect.

As usual, there was a drop in one blood component or another several times, and I had a few transfusions of donor blood. One day in the morning, as always, they took my blood, a few hours later the result was ready, and it turned out that I had something reduced, I don't remember what. They said they would do blood transfusions. But there was no suitable one available, so they postponed it until the next day. By the next day, that blood component had already increased, and there was no need in transfusion. And then I imagined: a person plans to go to donate blood. But in the morning, he feels bad, he decides to postpone it to the next day. And that's all, there is one Daria less in the world. I'm not talking that everyone has to go urgently to donate blood, but about how some minor things or a combination of circumstances can easily end our lives. Now look at the problems that surround you. Are they worth your worries? In short, nothing sets you up for a positive mood like a situation in which you find yourself on the verge of giving up the ghost.

One night I had a severe pain in my chest. I called the nurse with an alarm button, she called the doctor on duty. The doctor measured the pulse, listened to the breathing, then brought an ECG machine. My leukocytes had already fallen by that time, and I wasn’t allowed to leave the ward, otherwise I could have reached this device myself. And so, from the moment when I pressed the alarm button to the moment when the doctor brought the ECG device, 15 minutes passed, no more. This regards my surprise how people come to the hospital, get chemo and go home. I can't imagine how this is possible. Maybe this is how people are treated only at the first or second stage, but not at the fourth? I don't know, but the doctors know better.

By the end of the withdrawal from the fourth chemo my catheter hadn’t worked properly anymore. There was no inflammation, as last time, but the medicine hardly dripped. I found a pose in which it dripped more or less. I was afraid that they would put a new catheter in my neck again. Maybe they would have put it on if there was another course of chemo ahead.

I was given a referral for a free PET CT scan and told to sign up for mid-September. I would have been out of the hospital by then. We needed to find out exactly my condition, whether the tumor had passed or we needed to do more chemo. I called and made an appointment.

When the leukocytes rose a little, but the body had not yet fully recovered, I was transferred to the general ward for the first time. Some patient started to suffer from agranulocytosis, and I would have been released soon anyway. I started such a fuss! I was on this ward for 3 months, and you can imagine how many things accumulated. Clothing, medicines, paints, paper, handicrafts… I didn't know what to grab, I was rushing around the ward, convulsively collecting everything. The orderly brought a cart like in a supermarket, and I took everything away in 5 visits. They put me in a triple room. I decided not to lay out my stuff. I had packed more than half of it. The next day it was Saturday, and I was going to ask my husband to take home those things which I could do without for those few days.

The orderly was glad for me, she said that it would be more fun to be in the company. She had already started talking to me about this topic several times, and each time I tried to explain to her that I was not bored alone. I wonder whether she didn't hear me or didn't believe me. I basically don't understand how it can be boring to be on your own. There are so many interesting things to do in the world that don't require communication or a lot of space. I was glad that I was transferred to the general ward only at the end of treatment, and I spent almost all the time in a single room. But now I found out that not all the patients have agranulocytosis every time after the chemo. It turns out that leukocytes fall only after an intensive course, after the regular one they may not fall so much for agranulocytosis to begin. And I had all 4 of them intensive. I also understood what doctors meant when they said that I was a disciplined patient. One patient on our ward started to have agranulocytosis, and she wondered if she could have porridge for breakfast. It never crossed my mind to eat porridge when I was not allowed to eat it, but it turned out that some people ate it.