Okay, so what did they do at that stage?
They sent me for a biopsy of the one that my mum had originally found at the top of my back, the tumour at the top of my back. And that, yeah that, that was what confirmed it I think, that was what confirmed the diagnosis the second time. That, that only took a sort of a few days to, to happen after the operation so perhaps if I'd gone in you know as soon as I'd started feeling the symptoms I would have been treated a lot sooner.
Okay. Did the consultant explain to you what they were going to do, how they were going to do it?
Yes they, the consultant said that it would be the same sort of, it would follow the same sort of treatment pattern as the first time only I would have, in every month, or in every four weeks one week would be in hospital having chemotherapy and three weeks out recovering because the chemotherapy they were going to give me the second time was a lot stronger than the first time. And they also said that the last block, the last course of chemo I would have would be a thing called BEAM which is high dose therapy involving really strong chemotherapies which I'd have to stay in hospital for three weeks for. So yeah, no they, they explained it all to me then when I got diagnose.
Okay what were the side effects of the intense therapy, the intense chemotherapy?
They were the same as the first time but a lot stronger, the side, simply a lot worse. Like, like the first time I remember having sort of really quite strange mouth ulcers in my mouth from one drug called Methotrexate which it, it sort of takes away the skin of the lining of mouth inside so it, it's painful to eat, swallow and that sort of thing. That, the first, the first time I was treated that only lasted a couple of days at a time maybe, maybe two or three days at a time but the second time I had it, had it, the, the doses of the Methotrexate I was given, being given were so high that it lasted sort of two or three weeks at a time. And for that sort of period of time I literally couldn't open my mouth to speak. I, I had a sort of pad of paper by my bed in hospital to write things down for people because I couldn't, I couldn't talk to them.
And well hair loss was the same and, but the second time I wasn't, I, I didn't put on so much weight, actually I'm not quite sure what that was, why that was but the second time no I certainly didn't, if, if anything I got a lot thinner the second time.
Okay.
The second time round.
Did you have any pain?
Not after the treatment was started because the first lot of treatment they gave me, I remember actually sitting in hospital just after I'd been taken in and the first load of chemotherapy they gave me was actually through a syringe, through a cannula in my hand because they hadn't had time to put the Hickman line in yet. And they gave me sort of a, a syringe full of one called Vinblastine in my hand and literally twenty-five minutes later the pain that I'd been sort of suffering for the last three months just went away, like that. And I, that was the last I felt of that pain, twenty five minutes after the chemotherapy had been given to me, it was really strange [chuckles].
Okay, which other treatment did you have apart from the chemotherapy, the intensive chemotherapy the second time?
Oh I had a stem cell harvest treatment, yeah that was -
Can you explain that -
Well -
- in more detail?
- in more detail, yeah.
What does it do?
That was, okay I had to sit in a blood donor place at the hospital I was being treated at for, I think it was four hours I was there with a huge needle in my arm, [chuckles] literally it was the biggest needle I've ever seen in my life, but anyway, stuck in my arm for four hours. And they had to you know basically just drain newly growing cells out of my body from just as I was coming back from the period of being neutropenic i.e., when I hadn't got any blood, white blood cells left they had to drain all the stem cells which are the baby cells out and sort of harvest them for when I'd need a stem cell rescue after the BEAM which was the high dose treatment which would sort of really completely take away all my immune system.
So basically you know the stem cell thing was as a back up for after, after the high dose to sort of help me recover much more quickly. |