Chimo

Hi all.
It may come as a surprise to some of you, but then to those of you that know me no surprise, in that I am not doing the chemotherapy and radiation therapy after all.
I did turn up at St James is Hospital, Leeds, on Monday as expected. I arrived at 2 PM in the afternoon and waited for four hours until 6 PM when one of the registrars came with the consent form for me to sign.
Apparently, by law in England, she has to go through the list of side effects that can be inherent in the treatment of chemotherapy. This she proceeded to do. The only problem was the fact that she came out with a whole list of side effects that I had not heard of up until this point.

Two weeks prior to me being in St James's, Christine had flown in from South Africa to see the doctor in charge specially so that she could explain to both of us the treatment and the side-effects so that we could make an informed choice. During this meeting, we were told that the chemotherapy that I would be undergoing was a very mild form of the treatment. A lot of the side-effects would not apply to me, like hair loss etc. It was based on this information the Christine and I decided to go ahead with the treatment.

I now found myself with a registrar in front of me detailing side-effects that I had not heard about up until this time. These side-effects were as follows:

Feeling sick and nauseous and being sick. Well we did have this explained to us but were told that it would be very very mild if at all.

Another side-effect is that your kidneys are affected with the possibility that if the effect is severe your kidneys can be permanently damaged, and so during the treatment they have to very closely monitor your water output in case you go down this road. This is one of the side-effects that were not mentioned.

A numbing or tingling of the feet and hands. Again this was not explained to us and the doctor in front of me told me that most people feel this affect up to some level. I asked this doctor particularly how long these side-effects last but she would not say categorically, however, later I found myself being given two sheets with all of the information which said that most of these side effects can last for a few months after the treatment ends. This meant that as I was undergoing the treatment over four months, I would have most of these side-effects in place for nearly 9 months.

The treatment can affect hearing, so that you may develop Tinitus and lose the ability to hear some high-pitched sounds again, for a small number of people this may be permanent.

This treatment also affects your ability to taste food.

This treatment also lowers your resistance to infection by reducing the production of white blood cells in the bone marrow which leaves you prone to infection. This particular doctor really went into this giving me the impression that this was pretty common, and I was told that I would be given a telephone number so that if I developed a cold or a cough I had to instantly ring them and be rushed into the hospital for a session of antibiotics.

You could experience bruising or bleeding like nosebleeds, blood clots rashes or bleeding gums.
In some minor cases anaemia can become part of the symptoms with tiredness and breathlessness.

A lot of appetite. Again, most people go through this particular one.

Also, one of the ones that I was particularly interested in was the fact that this treatment could make you impotent.
All of these symptoms that I have just explained were not explained to Christine and I the first time we met the doctor two weeks ago.

It was, then, that I had to inform this doctor that this was the first time I'd heard of any of these symptoms, and so I was not in place to accept the treatment. I said I would go away and think about it and let them know in one week's time.
On returning back home, I gave Christine a call in California and we talked over the situation. The result of this is the Christine and I have agreed not to do the treatment but to put all of our eggs in one basket and to totally rely on this programme of diet, enzymes, vitamins etc to overcome the cancer.

In the next part of this blogger I will do as I said I would do, which is to detail all of the remedies that you can take to reduce the effects of chemotherapy, which I had with me at the time, but which now I do not need.
And so it is I find myself back at the cottage totally immersing myself in this program and trying to reorientate my way of life and outlook in order to overcome the causes of this illness.