Last day of pills and some stats

This morning I took the last of my BEACOPP tablets (see the photo). I still have to take some extra bits and pieces but the main ones are done. In particular, the bitter, crappy prednisolone pills that I have had to take six of 14 mornings out of 21 are finished. Hooray!


Today is Monday 10th May and I started on Monday November 30th, 162 days ago. In that time I have had:

• 672 prednisolone tablets
• 192 procarbazine tablets
• 96 respirim forte tablets
• approx 336 potassium tablets
• approx 320 antiviral (famvir) tablets
• 8 bags of bleomycin
• 8 bags of vincristine
• 8 bags of doxorubicin
• 8 bags of cyclophosphamide
• 24 bags of etoposide
• 8 bags of mesna (plus a few tablets)
• 21 Emend anti-nausea tablets
• 8 pegfilgrastim (white blood cell booster) injections
• more than 10 red blood cell booster injections
• more than 50 blood tests
  
• 2 CT scans (that means two bottles of liquid concrete)
  
• 2 lung function tests
  
• 1 blood transfusion
• 7 days in the Lyell McEwin hospital
• 2 chest x-rays
• 1 ultrasound
  
• 2 cups of hospital soup
• a few other random tablets I can't remember
  
• an unknown volume of saline and
• an unknown volume of green tea.

Not a bad effort for someone who wasn't too keen on taking panadol.

For completeness, I should perhaps add the things prior to starting chemo:

• 1 CT scan
• 1 PET scan
• 1 lung function test
• 1 gated blood pool scan
• 1 bone marrow biopsy
• 1 fine needle biopsy
• 1 chest x-ray
• 1 ultrasound
• 1 lymph node removed