The advantage of the chemotherapy is that you know what is coming: they do not change their composition.
All nice and nice, such a course of chemotherapy, but in principle it destroys all cells in your body. If you’re lucky, the tumor cells, but certainly also the cells that you really can’t afford to miss. Especially the white blood cells.
For the first time I was like death. The remedy could be worse than the disease. It was intense: you feel the poison coursing through your veins and entering your body and head. It settles mainly on your tongue, it gives you an indescribably nasty rock taste, your sweat smells just as bad, you get sick of your own breath. You’ll get nauseous anyway, the first time. Everything tastes like you think iron tastes.
What is kindly called “side effects” manifests itself in stages. The second day is Dehydration Day – your body turns into a piece of parchment. You can no longer smile because the corners of your mouth are so dried out that it hurts. Unfortunately, there is little that can be done about this other than waiting for it to pass. Yes, a lot of Vaseline but that doesn’t really help. Annoying, because I like to laugh.
Then follows the pimple drama: dozens of thick, painful pimples suddenly appear on the back and sides of my bald head. Fortunately I can hardly see them but feel all the better and I do that constantly. They disappear as quickly as they came.
The next day there is the raging fire in your mouth. Everything you eat and drink hurts. While you just need food that is as spicy as possible, so that you can still taste something above the iron. Once it was unbearable – I have to say that if necessary I had to order an extra hot meal from the Nepalese.
Anyway, I felt worse for three days than after previous courses: nauseous, flu and coughing a lot, which I don’t normally do. Well, luckily that turned out to be corona and no effect of the chemotherapy.
I got used to it, even that burning mouth. The advantage of the chemotherapy is that you know what is coming: they do not change their composition. I tolerate them well. Be it that on ‘Day 9’ I am very shaky. That is the day after the short second course, a week after the first. You are then at its weakest and most susceptible to all kinds of scary diseases and infections, because all the poison from the two cures screeches through your body.
The following was found: on Day 9 I can inject myself with a shot of Pelgraz, which contains a protein that closely resembles white blood cells. A special nurse came to explain it to me at home (it took 2 seconds, while she had been trying to find my home for an hour and a half).
I like doing it. You put that thing on your lower leg, give it a nudge and wait for it to change color.
The next day you will feel much better.
Volkskrant journalist Eelco Meuleman (60), who has been diagnosed with terminal kidney cancer, writes weekly about his life.