Friday is Hot Chocolate Day!!! i.e. I drink lots of hot chocolate today in hospital while I'm waiting. Had a nice early appointment at eight fifteen got bloods taken and finally into see the doc, he was saying how well he thinks it's going with all the counts being at a nice level and the RBCs having been 8 are now up to 13 odd, then he asked how things where. I told him about my armpit and another lump in my groin. He had a check at them and I said I thought initially the groin was a hernia (obviously I'd forgotten the name i think i called it "the artery type lump") but it doesn't change when you cough so I'm now not sure, when he checked he said it was quite hard and asked me to cough and it didn't change. He went on to say there is a hernia you can get there that can cause pain down that part of your leg, so that would be the occurrence of that explained. When he was checking my armpit he couldn't find any glands that where swollen and said there must just be a leak, didn't explain this to me though so I don't know what this could mean, obviously nothing serious otherwise he would have done more tests to find out.
4 of 4 getting a bit big
I got the feeling that he wasn't going to do the scan that he had been talking about, as he was so pleased with the blood counts and how they were going, I may be wrong but I definitely wanted the scan done and with the bump in the groin it certainly started to think, yeah let's give this guy the scan. To finalize the scan I said to him that I haven't felt this rough since before I knew I had Lymphoma. So it was obviously on his mind to give me the scan since he was the one that had initially brought it up and I think he just wanted to ensure me that it had been doing the job, I really hope it is, or I could just have been misreading the situation and he was going to get me the scan anyway. But with how rough I have been feeling it makes it hard to believe that "things are better". I had also asked him if I could come up more regular to keep an eye on the counts to see if anything happens with them and remembering everything that had happened and how I felt for three weeks is tough, I barely remember what happened in the last week in any detail. He asked me how often would you like to come up and I said each week and he was fine with that, not often you get people wanting to go to hospital more.
He decided to continue on with the dose I was on anyway and that the scan should go down far enough to be able to see the lump in my groin too to find what exactly that is. We organized what drugs I needed to take home and went to speak with one of the nurses to get some of them there and then, and was told to go for a cup of coffee. I was going to go into town for a bit rather than waiting around for a couple of hours like the previous time, but I don't think a cup of coffee would kill three hours and I was sort of wondering why last week the nurses where apologising for it being such a long day. So I assumed it might be a lot quicker today then, so I didn't bother going out and sat around reading 1984 and on my phone, the time went on and on and on and it was soon half twelve and I thought right if I was in there I'd be getting a lunch, I'm not, so I'm going to get my own. Went to the shop and paid for one I would've been getting free if I was in treatment. Had started watching Men In Black before this so continued on with that, read a bit more and finally decided I'm going for a nap, obviously this is when the buzzer goes off to get me in to get sorted after four and a half hours of "getting a coffee" one hell of a big cup.
I asked the nurse if that was the normal procedure and timescale of things and she said yes I would go home and come back for about two, so that is the plan for the next cycle. Got my paracetamol and piriton (can't say this enough but I really do bloody well hate that stuff) the nurse was surprised by this, as I tell everyone how much I hate the stuff every time and she said that most people like getting it and being able to have a nice sleep while the infusions going in. The nurse also asked if this was part of the ITP and then had to explain that it could be through a genetic thing but we're waiting on results of that, or it could just be another thing. Also told her the story of how it was lucky that it was discovered with having the chest virus and getting a CT scan only to find "ok yeah your lungs are mostly blocked up but we're more concerned about these swollen glands in your back". I would probably still be on an inhaler from my GP otherwise. She also asked how long I'd been going up to Bridgewater and I said I think its 9 years now, she had been there 8 and said that would be about right, I remember finding out about you. The staff there are really nice and friendly well most, maybe a couple I'm not too keen on but the people who work there already probably know who they are.
Got the chemo and started on the Rituximab and during this I watched MIB 2, still got about another four minutes left to watch so i'll do that now and then watch Agora, yes Agora, not Argo, Agora Rachel Weisz. Will be the third, not often I watch films multiple times.
But now I'm home and everything feels fine, I think I got up early enough this morning so that my back pain didn't have time to kick in thankfully and didn't have any of the aches and pains of chills or flu-like symptoms so that was nice, but might not have been a bad place to have them, although I did have the sweats. So fingers crossed to a couple days of not feeling too bad and then a week of feeling good again.