This is the beginning of my second round of chemotherapy treatment for bowel cancer. It follows on from my surgery on 12 March to remove the tumour in my anus and provide me with a permanent stoma. This operation went very well and my quality of life post-op has been very significantly improved and I thank the whole surgical and the nursing support teams at Kingston Hospital for their excellent work. Following the operation a CT scan showed that the cancer had spread into the rest of my body hence the need for more palliative chemotherapy which started today 16 July 2013.
I had to be at the Royal Marsden, Sutton for 9.00am and we left home at 8.15 am arriving 5 minutes late to be greeted by the nursing staff who were going to fit a PICC line into a vein on my upper arm leading into a larger vein near my heart. The PICC line is a Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter which can be left in for at least one year and saves having to have a cannula fitted for each treatment, it also allows for bloods to be taken without needles, Yes!!
The whole procedure was done under local anaesthetic by a brilliant nurse, Lisa, who had explained everything clearly to me in advance and was very proud of the recently acquired online system that was able to plot the progress of a small magnet in the end of the line which allowed her to get the end of the PICC line in exactly the right place. This had to be confirmed by X-rays and signed off by the doctors before I left at around 12 noon. All in all in wasn't such a bad experience and I was able to drive Wendy home with no problems apart from the hold up at the Scilly Isles roundabout where there had been an accident between two cars and two lorries.
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