Day 40. December 15. First day of chemo today, so how was it?

The build up was worse than the actual experience which was comfortable, pain free and with wonderful caring staff looking after me throughout. The whole process took 4 hours from start to finish including 2 hours for the infusion of Oxaliplatin. I left with a bag of pills to last 14 days including Capacitabine and various others to counter any effects of nausea, diarrhoea or constipation, should they happen.
The main side effect explained was a feeling of difficulty in breathing if cold air was taken in or eating cold food / drinks but this would only be temporary and could be relieved if deep breaths were taken in through a face covering. This happened whilst still in the hospital room when I tried drinking some cool orange juice which was slowly warming up after coming straight from the fridge. It was quite a shock to experience the reaction but a few deep breaths soon relaxed the back of the throat and everything was fine. Owing to the outside temperature being -5C / 22F it was particularly important to wrap up well on leaving the hospital and when getting home.

Another side effect is tingling fingers when touching cold objects but I'm wearing thin cotton gloves to overcome this (very useful when extracting a bottle of white wine from the fridge this evening to make a sauce for the fish dinner!)

So all in all not too bad so far. Pills have been taken, more tomorrow and for the next 14 days over Christmas and then 7 days holiday before starting the whole process again. I'm expecting to get gradually more fatigued as the treatment proceeds over 12 weeks followed by a month of recovery.

I hope this story might help those about to go through a similar experience. And for those who are more advanced in their treatment or who have finished, it would be good to know what else lies in store!

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