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#2 – Shrinking Tumours

30th Jan 2019 – My day started at Peter MacCallum by having a PICC line put in, which was actually quite quick and simple. No where near as scary as I thought it would be and I even got to choose the music I listened to while getting it done! After that, we had Chemo Education. This consisted of being shown around the chemo ward, speaking to the pharmacist and going into detail of every possible side effect that I could get – and there are a lot 😒

My first round of chemo started at 1.30pm. I was actually kind of excited to get started because it felt like I was taking the first step to kicking cancer. Over the last few weeks I’d been feeling some pain in my upper abdomen (that’s where the liver is located for those of you like me who had no idea!) but as soon as chemo started it was like the pain was already starting to go away! It felt like I could already feel the tumor shrinking!

My treatment consists of 3 different chemo drugs. The first one took 30mins, the next was 2hrs and the final one was 1.5hrs. All together it took about 6 hours to complete. The only issue I had was in the last 45mins of treatment. The nurse had let me know that if I started to feel hot/cold, have stomach cramps or feel sick at all, to press the buzzer immediately. I felt my face go completely red and had a sharp cramp and had to press the buzzer. Within 30 seconds there were at least 10 staff members in the room to check on me! They stopped the treatment and gave me an injection straight into my stomach to stop the symptoms. After about 15mins we could re-start the last bit of the treatment and after connecting my ‘at-home’ chemo (who we named Baxter) I finally finished at 7.30pm!

Considering I spent over 10 hours in the hospital today, it went quickly (playing Mario Kart probably helped it feel faster)! All of the staff were fantastic, especially Mish the nurse who was in charge of my chemo. Overall, today was a good day!