There's been an inexorable slide towards this moment. I knew it was going to happen but somehow that doesn't make it any easier to take. I've got to endure another 6 months of chemotherapy and this time I'm for the CHOP, or to be more specific R-CHOP. Last time around I only had to take the one drug, Fludarabine in tablet form. This time it's the full- go to hospital and have the treatment through a needle (oh yes one of those again...) - deal. And it's not just the one drug this time but an exquisite combination of nasties.
C - Cyclophoshamide (causes hair loss and infertility)
H - Hydroxydoxorubicin (hair loss and heart toxicity)
O - Oncovin (aka Vincristine...I'm not having this because it causes peripheral neuropathy)
P - Prednisone ( A steroid which can cause mood swings, water retention and kill bones)
R - Rituximab (imunotherapeutic agent; not chemo. Can kill during first infusion.)
lovely. I can't wait. It's a three week cycle with the CH and R going in on day 1 and the P in tablet form for the next week and we then start the whole thing again on day 21. They want to do between 6 and 8 of these cycles depending on how it goes. The most difficult thing for me to get my head round is the fact that I don't feel at all ill. The only symptoms I have are slight breathlessness when going up stairs and dizzyness when I get up too quickly out of a chair, both of these due to anaemia. I chart this cancer through numbers and graphs on a sheet of paper, and the numbers say start treatment. So in November I say goodbye to my colleagues at work for another 6 months and prepare to feel like shit. It had better be worth it.
