On Monday of this week we had an appointment with Dr Rimmer, the oncologist, to review the first chemo session and check blood results. It’s amazing to see that John’s neutrophil level has returned to normal (5) from .1 when he was admitted to hospital. This gave the go-ahead for chemo session number two which has today been completed without a hitch. It will be interesting to see how John feels and if the side effects take a similar pattern to the first 3-week session. This week he has felt fine, and has been into work each day. We have been told to expect the fatigue to become more pronounced as the treatment progresses, but we’ll wait to see as it is clear that everyone reacts differently.
We were told that he may experience ‘hair thinning’, and we had expected this to kick in perhaps after the third session. Last weekend his hair started to fall out well and truly, and has continued to do so this week. John has always had a good head of hair, and we are seeing that now with so much of it falling out. He’s decided that it will be best to shave it all off, and Dan has volunteered to support him in shaving his off too. This seems too good an opportunity to miss, so we have set up a Just Giving page to raise money for Cancer Research UK. We have been really touched by the generosity of friends and family already – thank you so much to all that have supported us so far.
It was John’s Birthday on 20th, but having just been discharged from hospital we decided that it wasn’t worth the risk eating out as his blood levels still left him susceptible to infection. But with good blood results on Monday we did go out for a belated Birthday celebration.
We are now home and keeping our fingers crossed that side-effects of chemo session number 2 will be mild and similar to the last session. We would like to avoid another 3-night stay in hospital. Two sessions down, four to go……
