Dimbleby Cancer Care Unit, Guy's Hospital, London
Chemotherapy, day one.
It begins...
Monday, 10:00 AM start. Jo and I arrive 15 minutes early and are sent to suit 'C' ( Presidential ) "bang!" on 10:00 AM. We settle in and within a couple of minutes we meet S.S.N. Tracy Hammerstein and it starts. She de-rigs my PICC Line from its post-opp configuration gives that are of my arm a thorough sterile clean up and hooks me up to my first hour of hydration via an I.V. drip.
As kidney function is a crucial factor in Chemo I'm required to measure my urine production, Nurse Tracy warns me that i'll be up and down all day, Jo decides to amuse her self by keeping track. My first half jug full of pee is enough to reassure Tracy that we can go a head with the chemo and no more measuring would be necessary. By the time we were to leave ( 5 hours later ) I had gone for a pee 10 times, Jo decided to stop counting. Jo said she didn't mind me peeing like a race horse but did I really need to smell like one too, I said why not, after all I'm hung like one ( 'boom-boom' LOL ). She just stood there with a blank expression on her face.
When the I.V. bags are near empty an alarm sounds from the pump, just a small "beep-beep-beep..." like a little truck backing up, and the nurse come and changers to the next bag. For me that was 1 hour Hydration via saline solution, 2 hours Chemo ( Cisplatin ), 2 hours of rehydration.
The unit is divided up into half a dozen open plan suites, each with 4 large, gray, fully adjustable, reclining 'Lazy-Boy style' arm chairs, and guest chairs and adjustable tables. There is an internet cafe and tea and coffee making facilities. A couple of times a trolly and attendant do the rounds also offering drinks and fruit biscuits and sandwiches. Its all very calm relaxing and civilized.
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| I.V. Robo-Pump (left) Me! ( centre) Jo's portable midden (right) |
Monday is "Head & Neck Day" at the Dimbleby Unit. Head & Neck patients are a pretty rowdy bunch and are considered to be the "Royal Marine Commandoes" of cancer patients, I won't don't disappoint them...
At the end of the session I'm detached from the Chemo I.V. Robot and plugged into my portable Chemo Pump. Now I had looked for these on the W.W.W. and had found pics of "Portable ( 24-7, home use ) Chemo pumps" which were a traveling version of the upright Chemo IV Robot that I had spent the day on that makes a continues, gentle "putt-putt-putt..." sound as it operates. I was wrong, 'again'.
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| I.V. Robot |
The portable pump is "ingenious". Small, about the size of a half pint glass. Silent. Light. And has "NO" moving parts. It's, a Barometric or pressure differential pump. A soft bladder of liquid ( my medicine, Fluorouracil '5FU' ) is held in an acrylic bottle. The bottle is "evacuated" causing the bladder to expand. When the valve is set to 'open' the air pressure entering the bottle squeezes the bladder metering out a constant flow of treatment that lasts for 4 days. Brilliant !
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| "Pumpie" |
The full Flask weighed less than half a pint, it comes in it's own bag & strap and I wore mine like either a St Bernard or like a sporran depending on circumstance.
I won't be back to the unit until I'm due for a blood test in about a weeks time so I'm given a goodie bag of bits and pieces for the District Nurse to use when she comes to detach "pumpie", a used Tesco bag, "I-kid-you-not".
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| PICC Line Home Service Kit |
Two weeks rest until Chemo session two.
Edited with thanks to Jo W
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