Day 6

Today I didn't take any anti-nausea pill, and nothing happened! I don't feel nausea at all, I guess the chemo effects has been fading off.

Really feel like going out for a steamboat buffet, I have the appetite, but my digestive system has been weaken. I can't eat much at one go, I have to break my meals into many small meals separated by 2 hours apart.

I couldn't keep track of how many meals I eat a day, basically I have a bite within 1-2 hours. There is no difference between breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper, I take whatever it's convenient and I feel like to take, such as oat meal, bread, eggs, meal-substitute nutrition drink, fruits, raw vegetable and tomato.

I think my diet is never as healthy before.  

Day 5

I start to miss my favourite food, as these few days I only ate oat meals and meal-substitute nutrition drink. I start to miss all the part and parcel in my usual daily life too, like the daily routine lunch with my lunch kakis, I even missed those nonsense in the office and the traffic jam on the road.

May be you would think that I'm joking, but this is really how I feel. When I have everything in hands, I take them for granted. Now I begin to appreciate every bit of little things in my life.

Day 4 (Anti-Nausea)

Today I'm feeling so much better after taking the more "powerful" anti-nausea drug, Kytril. I was given two types of anti-nausea drug, Metoclopramide is the more economical one and Kytril is the more "powerful" one.

You may wonder why I didn't take the more "powerful" Kytril initially? This is because the doctor told me to try the more economical one first as a start, if it can't solve my nausea problem then try the Kytril.

一分钱一分货 always applies, please look at the price tag of the two types of anti-nausea drug above. 30 tablets of 10mg Metoclopramide cost S$2.40, but 3 tablets of 1mg Kytril cost S$34.05 ! Do the maths and appreciate why.

There is another more effective anti-nausea drug, Emend, which is supposed to be the very effective one. I peeped its price tag, S$42 per tablet ! 

Day 3

Today is about the same as yesterday, but feel more sleepy. I dozed off while watching “早安您好”.

Somehow I find the will power plays a part, if I don't feel like doing anything I would feel sleepy, if I want to do something like now typing on computer, my sleepiness is gone.

I found a an alternative view about cancer in this link, which I agree its view to a certain extend. Basically, I think that if a person doesn't have family history of cancer,  and he treats his body well, such as sleep early, eat regular meals, avoid stress, be happy; he shouldn't get cancer as his body immunity should be able to handle the minute amount of cancer cells before they developed into tumour.

For my case, I believe that I had taken too much preserved food when I was a kid, and I had the habit of sleeping late along these years because of playing computer games and watching TV. Now I have learnt the lesson, as a piece of advice, please sleep before 10:30pm.

This afternoon was getting tougher, kept on feeling nausea and lethargic , lost appetite. The more I rest, the worse I feel. I have to keep on looking for something to occupy me, such as simple exercises and clearing up old stuff. The worst is I can't focus and concentrate on watching TV, reading book or surf web.

This is just the 3rd day, and I have 18 more weeks to go. Time flies when you are enjoying, but time crawls when you are suffering.

Day 2

This morning I woke up at 6, took a bath and went downstairs for a stroll and some fresh air.

After 15 minutes walk, the sky started to rain, so I returned home to take my breakfast. My breakfast was 2 half-boiled eggs and oat meal with raisins. Now then I discovered the side-effects of chemotherapy; my taste-buds are playing tricks on me, the eggs and raisins did not taste as usual, which I don't know how to describe here.

Anyway, this doesn't bother me. The other side-effects I experienced are momentarily sore-throat and giddiness, which also not much a problem to me. What I most worry are nausea, vomiting and muscle-ache, that may affect my quality of life; fortunately they didn't happen on me yet.

Day 1 Field Report

I have done my first chemotherapy this morning. Overall it was a pleasant experience despite the 1 hour waiting time for the nurse to do all the preparation work, such as measuring weight, height, blood pressure, placing the injection stud into my hand, double checking the drugs, etc.

Anxiety is the part that bothered me most. A 50+ year old uncle was lying on a inclined chair in front of me, he came before me and was accompanied by his wife. While I was waiting for the nurse to attend to me, he was suffering in agony as a young and pretty nurse was facing problem in poking a injection stud into his hand. Probably he has thin veins in his hand, or the young nurse was not experience enough. I really prayed hard when I saw the scene.

Fortunately, a male nurse attended to me under supervision of an experienced female nurse. I didn't feel the pain at all when he was poking the injection stud into my hand.

Before the chemotherapy, I was dripped with saline and injection of anti-nausea medicine first. After that,  three types of drug were dripped into my vein one by one; first was the Paclitaxel for one hour, followed by Carboplatin for one hour, and the last one was Gemcitabine for 30 minutes. The first 2 drugs were fine as I didn't feel anything at all, but the Gemcitabine was fierce, it has a vein bursting effect on my hand. The vein in my hand felt like bursting which was very painful till I need to bite my other hand to diversify the pain. I told the nurse, she reduced the dripping rate and brought me heat-pad to put on my hand to reduce the pain.

During the chemotherapy, most of the time I was sleeping as I felt drowsy, until the Gemcitabine came. The whole treatment ended about 2pm, and I didn't feel any side effects so far.

So far so good, I had a nice bath, listen to music and surf web without feeling drowsy or lethargy. The only side effect I have so far is diarrhoea, this might be due to the huge portion of papaya I ate today.  

A lot of friends and relatives have been giving me tremendous supports, in terms of emotion, encouragement, information, books, food supply, supplements, and all other means. I'm greatly appreciate it and I will definitely remember who you are. In addition, I'm also glad that I managed to have some true friendship and kinship along these years.

Reconnaissance

This is one slice of the MRI scan images to show the tumors on my neck. The image should be oriented as if you are looking at my face.

At the left of the image (i.e. right side of my neck) there is a lump measured at 43mm; on the other side of my neck, there are one chain of small lumps, which the biggest one is measured at 15mm. This is the reason why the doctor declared me as stage 4, as he sees this chain of lymph nodes have been invaded by cancer cells. There is a possibility that some cancer cells might leak into my body even though all the scans couldn't show it.

As I'm not trained in looking at the MRI scan image, I couldn't see the lump in my nose in any of the slice images. According to the doctor, the lump in my nose is not so much a threat for the time being as it is relatively small compared to those in my neck.