Chemo #3

Chemo #3 went down okay. It took a lot less time than before. The Rituximab took 2 hours to go in and the actual chemo was about an hour and a half. Unfortunately, it was really busy at the day unit, so I didn't get to see my usual consultant and had to see a stand in doctor. I went through to see him but he had his face glued to my notes and other than the few words he spoke when he made brief eye contact he spent the rest of the time mainly scribling away in silence. Kind of rubbish. He asked a few bland questions, misanswered a few of mine (i.e. gave me answers that I had to query until he answered them properly or I gave up), also he seemed to have had a major, successful, personality bypass operation. He made me think of a very dull version of John Major!

(a pic of John oozing his usual charismatic presence)

I had to nick name this consultant character, Doctor Charisma. This name got back to my normal consultant who was suitably amused. We then had a quick chat about some discoveries regarding statins and Rituximab (don't ask, I'm just interested in all the technicalities and new discoveries) and then I was good to go home.

During my time there, I spoke to a couple of other fellow Lymphoma friday participants and eaves dropped on another. The main thing was that I was a lot better off that some of the others there. One guy, a 37 year old bloke, had Lymphoma in his bone marrow and pretty much everywhere, another was recently diagnosed, with a delay of several weeks due to a bit of a botch up by an ENT consultant and had Lymphoma in his abdomen, neck and all over. Not nice.

I confirmation from Doc Charisma, that the nodes in my neck are now gone (oh yes! Be seeing you, losers!) and that the discharge notes from my time at Hotel Torbay (the Torbay hospital I ended up in over easter), confirmed that my chest mass had shrunk from 10cm to 5cm, which has me a very happy chappie.

Dr. C did not mention my scan at the end of cycle 3 and I forgot to ask (my head was a bit buzzy with pre-meds though), so I've emailled my normal consultant "The Moule-meister" (he is called Dr. Moule and is very good) and hopefully he can cofirm the details.