First chemo

Richard had his first chemo session at The Royal Marsden this past Tuesday It went really well even though it was a very long day, from 8:30am to 7pm. A lovely nurse, Claire, expertly and tenderly took care of Richard the whole day and he was visited several times by Dr Mochlinski from Mr. Cunningham's team who explained the whole procedure. Alex, the pharmacist stopped by with the chemo pills which Richard will take morning and night for the rest of the 21 day cycle until the next hospital visit.

Friends dropped by through the day and the fact that phones were allowed set Richard free to text, email, take and make calls. That made the time go alot quicker. It also helped that the view from his chair was out a huge expanse of glass over the rooftops of a sun lit Chelsea. It felt a little like a day spa! Intraveiniously, he had a couple of hours of hydrating fluids followed by four hours of the chemo, followed by another hour or so of more hydrating fluids to flush out the kidneys. (Sorry, if this is more detail than most people want to hear!)

After dinner and a pretty good night's sleep at our flat in London, on Wednesday Richard rode his bike across town to a lunch engagement and then back to the Furniture Cave to do some business! Back at Whithurst we had dinner with two friends and then went to bed early.

Today Richard was a bit uncomfortable with tiredness overwhelming him as well as a fluctuating, mild nausea. He ate breakfast, lunch and dinner though, so is doing pretty well on the nutrition front.

Everyone's experience with chemo is different. We are of course hoping it only gets better!

Thanks for the all the amazingly lovely, supportive comments. They encourage Richard to keep with the program!