Medication

Medication. Medication.
Medication's what you need.
(If you want to be a record-breaker)

My life is pretty slow these days, but it doesn't help that I have to sing this every time I take a pill. It uses up quite a bit of the day.

Now how did the simple country girl who bravely endured a hangover rather than go and get some paracetamol end up with all these meds? It didn't happen all at once. Let us go back in time and see how it happened.

Pre-Cancer Conditions
These are pills for things that were wrong when cancer was just a twinkle in the devil's eye. Since I seem to be baring all, in my case it was stuff for ADHD and anxiety.

Pre-Cancer Health Crazes
I'm only human and got into miracle supplements just as much as the next woman. Chugging fish oil, glucosamine sulphate, that thing that helps your memory (haha I have honestly forgotten its name)..
I was naively hoping that these would make me less stiff and more intelligent and thus help me live forever. Well that went well.

Pre-Diagnosis Pain Relief
Serious abdominal pain started in June 2016 though had been bumbling away for a few months before.

I started with the classic ibuprofen and paracetamol combo, though the GP told me not to take ibuprofen. For once, I was naughty and defied the doctor, because that way I could get a full 4 hours of sleep. Later she relented and gave me omeprazole, which protects the stomach against the stomach-dissolving aspects of ibu.

In about August, I went to the doctor and cried like a baby, thus starting my canter through the opiates.

First up was co-codamol. I'd had this before and experienced a lovely zonkiness so I was quite looking forward to it. But this time it seemed to do nothing. By the way, you need a script to get decent cocodamol, the stuff you can get over the counter is just pretend.

Next was Tramadol. The first day I took this I vomited into a bag of madelines on a coach. I exaggerate. Pat had managed to remove the madelines in  jig speed. Good woman in a crisis. I then divided the rest of the day between lying in a small room full of chairs wrapped in a tablecloth and sitting in a churchyard crying.

The day after the Tramadol disaster, I went to the GP, cried like a baby again and asked could I please go into hospital and be put on a drip. Apparently, the NHS doesn't work like this, so as a consolation I got some morphine. Ah sweet Morpheus etc etc! It's scary to take your first spoonful, but my God it helps.

Chemotherapy Extras
After my first chemotherapy session, I encountered the largest carrier bag I have ever seen. When held like a normal bag it slid along the ground. It was full of all the extra meds I needed to get through the next two weeks. 

My party bag included 3 sorts of anti-sickness, steroids and Filgrastim injections (boosts bone-marrow cell production? Or something?).

But everything has terrible rules attached. You start this one on day 4 and go on for five days. You start that one on day 2 and taper it off according to a formula. You take the other one for x days, but only IF NEEDED up to a maximum of y tablets per day. Then there are conditions like you must take it first thing  with food, or at the same time every day without food. It is mind-blowing unless you have experience of preparing a timetable for a school of 1500 pupils.

So by now I have filled the pill tin and become very confused. But there is more.

Complications
I guess it's no big deal really, but this nearly broke me.

They found a blood clot in my spleen. They seemed to think this was a worry. When I got home I told my over-educated kids and they explained that the clot may become mobile and travel to my heart brains or lungs, causing instant death. So I guess it IS a worry.

The solution is daily blood-thinning heparin injections. I hate them. They make a squirty noise when you do them, leave a big bruise and sting like mad. 

For a few nano-seconds I considered just giving up and not doing them. But hey, in for a penny, in for a pound. 

And now I must leave you..

It's medication time. Again.