Chemo five...and the big red ice box

Today is chemo five day and as always I find myself not sleeping and up well before dawn cracks over the city, even before the early bird chirps. This has been the case each and every time. One would have thought one would get used to it, but nada, not me! Actually what I would call chemo stress (CS) begins a day before. Actually of all the about 10 days since we discovered the presence of Mr Hodgkin confirmed and reconfirmed chemo days have been the worst for Ranjan and every time I have tried to do my very best to try and alleviate issues. The first after chemo hours were terrible as Ranjan had reacted to the steroid they injected.

We can now laugh about his time and space travel, but believe you me, it was scary to see him insisting we were in 1972 and he had had lunch with his pals at the Golf club particularly as he was aggressive, something Ranjan never is. We discovered the culprit and made sure it was eliminated the medicine from his premeds shot. I forgot one thing. On chemo 1 we got caught in the 'recliner' game. You see the day care has a certain amount of beds and the rest is what the hospital calls recliners, but I call back breaker. For almost 4 hours if not more, poor Ranjan and his bad back were plonked in a recliner which is a badly designed seating contraption that kills your back. We did manage a bed for the last 2 hours but the recliner had taken its toll. So we set out to find how to get a 'bed' and have been successful for the past 3 chemos and hope we make it today. It means getting there before anyone else and going through the tedious paperwork in time. Maybe that us why my body clock wakes me so early!

The let us talk food. The food in the hospital is inedible. Period! One would have expected a hospital to have at least edible and healthy food but no. Their motto is save, save, save and charge, charge, charge! So be it breakfast - the worst bread - or lunch - strange looking slush and chewy rotis - you better stat away. The problem is that you are not allowed to bring food from home. You could buy food from the multi outlets they have, but they are all fast food joints. This beats me as I would think fast food would be a no no in a hospital. Money again.

So for the past 4 chemos Ranjan ate either the hospital food or the counter bought food and was sick. I presume eating organic for months now makes your body react to chemicals. So he has been nauseous and chemo days have been no eating days for Ranjan as he refuses any food when he comes back home. So this time I am smuggling  organic peanut butter sandwiches made with organic bread and egg sandwiches made with organic eggs!

After chemo 3, Ranjan got a few blisters in spite of all my voodoo. I found out that making him such ice while the chemo was on could sort the problem so went to chemo 4 with ice and lo and behold it worked.

Post chemo 4 we saw his nails getting bluish. Search, search, search! Now they have something called cold gloves on the net but could not find any in India so am taking two bags of frozen peas in an ice box and will apply them on his hands while the 3 drugs that could have that side effect are forced into his system. Let us hope I get passed the security guy with my big red ice box!