Man, you couldn’t keep me in that place one minute longer than necessary. I was changed and ready to go at 11am, just sitting there in the clothes I arrived in, waiting for the pharmacist to come so I can take my medicines and just *zoom* back home.

Of course, it’s never that easy, is it? Firstly, I had a whole load of things to carry. Thankfully Johnny Malkavian came along and volunteered to help, otherwise I’d have been quite put-upon. I really should think about buying a medium-sized, inexpensive suitcase to lug to and from the hospital. The only ones I have right now are either too small or *way* too large.

Anyway, the hold-up actually comes at discharge. We take a queue number, and it’s kind of a busy period. So it’s some time before it’s our turn. Then, the ladies at the counter have to do some sort of checking and cross-checking before I’m finally good to go. I have a look at the bill. Not for the final amount, but because I want to see what led to it.

Every time they run a blood test on me, it comes up to about 100 bucks. Every time they flush my IV lines, it’s 18 bucks. And so on, and so forth. It’s actually the little things that add up. Keep this in mind when you’re buying medical insurance – make sure the little things will be reimbursed, because while their amounts may not be staggering, they sure accumulate alarmingly.

Oh yeah, my parents and I have reached a joint decision that I’ll be continuing with my chemo sessions here in NUH. The specialist my consultant referred me to is already in great demand. Another one at a private hospital wants to put me on a different regimen with more sessions of chemo, which of course I am NOT amenable to. So, medical students and those recent graduates! Please go and specialise in something, preferably oncology or haematology, because your country needs you!

Meanwhile, my hair is still falling out. I’m nearly bald now, but some strands are still hanging on. It amazes me to see that, even though so much of my scalp is showing through, there’s still a significant amount of hair fall after I shower, after I comb my hair… it’s like, “where are you guys coming from?” Getting rid of 100,000 hairs is a bit more daunting than I thought. And the answer to the question I know is coming: I didn’t shave my head, because then the stubble would fall out and that’s even harder to remove than long hairs. At least I can amuse myself picking up long hairs, and they stick better to the floor-mop-thing.

I was thinking about this in the taxi on the way back, and I think a huge source of resentment in patients and caregivers is how the disease, any serious disease, just essentially puts your life on hold. My working life has been totally disrupted, and my daily life somewhat curtailed. As for my mum, shuttling back and forth between KL and Singapore means she’ll be able to put in more regular appearances at the office. So far she’s been bringing her work to the hospital, but of course that’s not the best of arrangements. At least when I’m back in KL, she can go back to some semblance of a normal working life. And as for my dad, his working life is the same, but his weekends are now spent racking up frequent-rider miles on the express buses.

My consultant came in today, and I was finally able to ask him the questions I’ve been keeping inside. Regarding the cardiotoxicity of doxorubicin, he said they were monitoring the dosage carefully. It’s actually an accumulated dosage, and even at the end of my 6 cycles, I’ll still be within the safe range. So no worries there. As for the number of cycles, he said that sometimes people have 8 cycles, but he prefers to do 6. The R-EPOCH treatment is somewhat new, but it gets rid of the need for radiotherapy after chemotherapy. Anyway, he seems pretty confident in it, and I trust him, so.

It’s so ironic that the TV is screening some documentary on leukemia, and bone marrow biopsy is described as a “simple outpatient procedure”. Ha! Simple doesn’t mean easy lor…

I have just had my dinner of rice vermicelli, mee sua, meen seen or mian xian. Let me tell you the long (no pun intended) story of how this noodle ended up in my bowl. Firstly, you can’t buy it retail. Nope, you have to order it straight from the manufacturer. So it’s already relatively scarce. What’s more, the only people who know where to buy this noodle are my 2 aunts. When they found out I wanted meen seen, they dug through their stores, and combined what they had to send to my house in KL. What’s more, this was late at night – my mum tells me 10pm. So my 2 little cousins had to change out of their pyjamas, into going-out clothes, to deliver my dinner and a get-well-soon card. *sniffles* So touched, y’all! I greatly enjoyed eating it too. It has irregularities in the width that you only get with handmade noodles. And it goes down smooth as silk.

You know what’s not smooth as silk? My skin. It’s become really dry from spending all that time in an air-conditioned environment, plus I haven’t been using a body lotion. Plus, of course I have my nice little collection of scars and wounds. Let’s take a tour!

The one on the neck is mostly hidden by t-shirt collar lines. It doesn’t look too bad, and is the least of my worries.

The long pink vertical line on my chest twinges sometimes, I put it down to healing. I still cover it up to prevent it from getting irritated by my clothes.

My 2 tube holes have distinct personalities now. The one nearer my left side is like a winking eye. The one on the right has a big fat plug of what probably used to be pus, blocking it up. And it’s not winking, it’s big and round. They both look bluish in the middle, which I find slightly alarming. It stings a little bit when I wipe them with alcohol swabs, I put it down to the new skin reacting to the alcohol. That’s strong stuff. My mum got worried that the bandages I’ve been using prevent airflow to the skin around the wounds, because the sticky part is somewhat plasticky. So we’ve gone back to basics and covered the wounds up with non-woven swabs and tape. That way we can air it a bit, I can cover them up from sight and irritation, and everyone’s happy. I guess.

My thigh wound is pretty much okay now, but since it also comes into contact with my clothes and it’s a site of much joint movement, it gets covered up too. The bigger worry is the skin directly below the wound, though. Until now, it still has that slightly numb, pins-and-needles feeling. I dunno if there’s been any permanent damage to the nerves. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s a bit disconcerting and I’d hate for it to disrupt my running, scootering or yoga activities.

Since my new obsession is food cooked Malaysian-mum style, I’ve been reading this blog with a hunger. The author is someone I’ve been following for a while, and she comes from Hainanese stock like my mother, so there’s a comforting familiarity to her recipes. But mostly I love food recipe blogs with pictures of the cooking in progress, because I am a visual person and I NEED to see the process. You tell me or write in words no use wan. I usually don’t encounter my food until it’s served, so I can’t imagine the cooking process anyway.

Tomorrow I think I shall write an NC-16 post! Means “not for children under 16″. When you read you’ll know why. Haha, the things being in hospital does to your imagination!

I sit and watch the numbers on the screen. They’ve been slowly reducing since last night. Counting down the time left until this round of chemo is done. Well, not quite done – I still have a 2-hour drip of cyclophosphamide left, but that’s a doddle compared to a 24-hour drip.

Breakfast was hash brown and chicken patties, of which I ate only the hash brown. The chicken patty is beyond salty, I really can’t take it. I sit and read the papers until my parents and boyfriend arrive. It’s been so boring spending the morning alone. The younger consultant doctor comes in to check on me, my heart, and my plug. He says my heart sounds are louder, which seem to indicate that the tumour is shrinking. He too agrees with me about the IV plug. The nurses are obsessed with checking my backflow on that vein, but it’s good and strong so they’re not worried.

Lunch is noodle soup, of which I eat only the vegetables and the minced meat. I don’t like yellow noodles much anyway. Of course that’s barely a meal, and it doesn’t last me for long. When my parents are off having their own lunch, I have a bottle of meal-replacement drink and more potato chips. Then I lie back like a giant bloated python.

I don’t stir again until 4pm, when I decide that I can’t fall asleep anyway. The mobile broadband connection cuts in and out on me, probably because it’s overheating in a room where I’ve switched off the air-conditioning. The aircon is centrally controlled, and it’s way too cold for me, so I just leave it off and regulate my temperature in other ways. Such as not wearing excessive layers.

Once awake, I am bored. Again. Since the broadband stick won’t cooperate, I’m left to play Cake Mania 2 on my computer. I do pretty well at it… better than I did at Plantasia anyway. Dinner arrives, it is porridge. I eat it all up, it’s not the best porridge I’ve ever had but it’s minimal-effort nourishment.

My parents leave early this time, my dad has to catch the evening bus back to KL. I leave the TV on HBO, more for background noise than anything else. I’m too busy playing games to care much, anyway. When I get online, there are people to talk to and assuage the boredom. I complain to my boyfriend that I can’t find good sambal sotong in Singapore. Sambal sotong is another one of my nostalgia foods. It’s tied in with secondary school CCAs and cheap lunches, as well as being real damn tasty. My mother makes a sourish version with white sotong, but the kind I want is a straight-up brown sotong sambal. Just thinking about it makes me so hungry. But at least I know I can have all the sambal sotong I want when I head back to KL, which will be quite soon actually.

At 11pm a nurse comes in to take off my etoposide line. One less tube, although the plug stays in. Once the other one is done, she’ll run the pre-meds and then the final bag. Graaah! She knows I’m due to go home tomorrow, and I tell her I’m indeed eager to leave. Half an hour left. I am like a prisoner to my IV machine.

Ever since the nausea hit, I’ve been a little bit incapacitated when it comes to differentiating between hunger, tummy upsets, and nausea. Because I’m now on a nibbling schedule, I don’t get the regular growly-stomach feelings at mealtimes. But if I interpret them wrongly, or eat too much, I’ll be left with a bloated, gassy stomach. Sigh. Why are digestive issues the biggest issues when I have a tumour in my chest?

Once this bag of chemo is done running, I’m going to tuck myself up in bed with my poor neglected DS. Today is the first day it’s been out of my bag. Then I’ll play Rune Factory until I fall asleep, or until the cyclo finishes. Whichever. Freedom beckons.

They said they wanna give me a jab, and I said, “No, no, no…”

The nurse came in to look at the cannula on my left hand, and said “I think we have to change the plug.” I protested, because I only have one last dose to go, and it seems totally unnecessary given that there’s no infection or anything to compromise it.

My regular consultant asked the nurse if she’d ever seen a double-lumen PICC line, and she regretfully said no. Sigh. So there go my hopes of having everything go through my line, instead of having to deal with cannulae.

Also, once I check out, I have to get a G-CSF injection. They offered to teach me how to do it myself, but I blanched. How do you expect me to jab a needle into myself, and do a good job of it? It goes against everything I am! I said I’d just come back in and have the nurses do it for me. I have a heart scan scheduled for the 1st anyway, maybe they could do it then. Otherwise, I’m attending a play on the 31st, so I’ll be on campus. They could give it to me when I check out, but it wouldn’t hit at the nadir so it’d be less effective.

Ugh, having chemo is like running a marathon. The physical side effects are bad enough, but it’s really a mental game. Just like running 42.195km, you can train yourself physically and know how your body will respond, but how your mental game goes on that day is entirely up to you. Nothing could have prepared me for the sheer boredom of being hooked up to a drip.

The first time around, I was expecting much worse, so I was pretty happy to see that I went through the first round with nothing more than a slight grumpiness. This time, though, the doctor increased the dosage, which probably resulted in my extreme stomach sensitivity. Also, I can’t stand being cooped up as easily this time, because there’s nothing preventing me from moving around, unlike the first round when I had the heart-juice grenades to worry about. And there is really only so much you can do on the Internet. Of course I could spend my time looking at really pointless stuff, but let’s not add brain rot to the list of deficiencies I’ll be nursing when I finally finish chemo.

Breakfast was chicken porridge, which I chose because of the ease of vomiting it back up. As I explained to the boyfriend, those with purging-type eating disorders usually choose semi-solids because they’re easier to puke back up. I didn’t puke my porridge back up, but IN CASE I had to, why put my esophagus through more pain? Oh, and kids, eating disorders are super not-cool, okay? They are mental disorders, and aren’t covered by insurance in Singapore, so don’t go getting one. It’ll be extremely expensive. Lunch was char koay teow that was orange. Um. But I ate most of it anyway, it made for a change from Western food. Dinner was tuna sandwiches on white bread, like the kind you would make for a kindergartner’s lunch. This is the so-called Delights menu. Not very delightful hor?

Bored with the bland, soft food, I used my “whiny patient” voice on my mum and asked her to buy me potato chips. Specifically, Lay’s brand potato chips. They’re the only ones I trust to make chips out of real potatoes, none of that wheat flour and cornstarch business. Also, I can’t afford the really good stuff like Kettle Chips or whatever Fairprice Finest has spoiled me with. Crunchy and salty, a combination I’ve been missing in the past few days. I can have crunchy crackers, or I can have salty food, but not a combination of both. I am more discreet this time around, consciously limiting myself to only a few chips. Wouldn’t want to suffer with a bloated stomach again.

Okay, let me explain to you why I am so bored of Western food. Frankly speaking, it’s the lack of vegetables. Oh, yes, carrots and peas and corn and the occasional broccoli are vegetables. I don’t deny that. But they aren’t very fibrous, and as such, are less effective as roughage when compared to “typical Chinese” vegetables such as kailan, choisam and other such dark green, leafy vegetables. I didn’t have regularity problems when I was at home, precisely because I made sure to eat these fibrous vegetables instead.

Now, the obvious answer would be to switch to the Chinese menu, but it’s not often that they have such vegetables either. I am stuck in a quandary! At least this time, the nurses haven’t yet threatened me with laxatives. I still don’t know what I’m going to do with the 3 bottles I have at home. Oh man, what I would give for a dish of xiao bai cai stir-fried with garlic… *sniffles*

And it would just be my good luck that the one weekend I get to watch ESPN, it’s internationals week. Means the English team are off playing a friendly that isn’t shown, and there’s no mention at all of the incredibly hot Spanish team, who are supposed to be playing Turkey. Got football channel but no football to watch. Bleah.

I have one last dose of chemo, which would be considered “Saturday’s dose”, but Friday’s dose of orange doxorubicin has another hour left to run. And this was after they increased the flow rate to 13 ml/hour from 11ml/hour. Haiyoooooo so slow. I can’t even sleep the time away because I’m neither tired nor sleepy. 17 channels with nothing to watch, the whole Internet with nothing to do. Time to get back to playing Rune Factory 2.

If my experience at StanChart Marathon last year is anything to go by, I’ll be endlessly crying tears of happiness when they take out the final chemo tube. Such a distance left to run…

I wake up feeling like shit. It feels like something needs to come out, but can’t decide how. It’s the nauseous feeling I usually get with gas, so I try burping. Not much relief. I feel so awful I decline breakfast, and ask the nurses for Ensure instead. I wash down my medicine with the vanilla-flavoured milky nutritional supplement I’m given.

My dry cough has changed in nature. Instead of just a tickle in the throat, it now ends with me dry retching. I cough again, except that this time, the retch brings up my breakfast. Yep, I vomited into my mouth.

Reflexively, I clamp my right hand to my mouth and frantically press the nurse call button with my left. Then I puke again. I’m left cupping my hand to my mouth, preventing the vomit from spewing all over the floor. The nurse comes in to find me wide-eyed and holding my puke in my hand.

She brings me a rubbish bag and I release the payload. It wasn’t as bad as I made it out to be. Because my stomach was empty, the only things I vomited up were the Ensure, and a few solid lumps that I later remembered were partially dissolved medicine tablets. It even smelled like milk, and not the sickly sour smell of regular vomit. I think I got off easy.

The pukey feeling leaves me, but it takes my appetite with it. I sleep till lunchtime, and decline lunch. Then I lie back and alternate between watching TV with the volume off, and dozing off. Some time after 2pm, I hear the nurses discussing me. Later one of them comes in to tell me I’m being transferred to a single room in Ward 86, just upstairs from where I am now.

They pile all my possessions onto my bed, and it takes 3 nurses to move me – 2 to handle the bed, and 1 to push the IV machine. We take the lift up to Cancer Centre on Level 8, where I usually have my consultations. They stop in front of Room 8, and some manoeuvring later, I am settled in my new bed. The new room has a day bed, and a desk setup like that of a hotel room. The TV sits on the desk instead of being suspended from the ceiling, and I can finally go to the toilet on my own. This room has a multiple-line IV machine, so I’ll only have one thing to wheel along with me. No more being tethered to the bed!

While watching Cartoon Network, I notice something disturbing. There’s an ad for a cartoon featuring 3 girl superheroes, and they bear an uncanny resemblance to my beloved PowerPuff Girls. Only, these is some anime-fied version. Turns out it’s “PowerPuff Girls Z” and they’ve essentially combined my 3 lovable kindergartners with Sailormoon. The girls have grown up and gone Japanese, but they haven’t got any better. The originals were brilliant, and there were flashes of adult humour if you were quick enough to catch the double entendre. This remix just seems like a pathetic attempt to win over an Animax-watching demographic. And yeah, the art style is uninspired – unlike the original, that bred PotterPuffs such as the one in my MSN avatar. Boo Cartoon Network!

Well, at least there is some good news. I don’t need to get pricked every day after all, the cannula stays in for the whole round of chemo. Etoposide goes in through that cannula and it’s not terribly harmful to veins, unlike doxorubicin and vincristine which have to go in through my PICC line. And my regular consultant pointed out to his younger colleague that “this is why we usually order double-lumen”, an obvious reference to the fact that someone dropped the ball somewhere on my PICC line. I asked if there was any chance I could get my line changed to a double-lumen one too, like maybe they could slip in the two lumens since the tube’s already in place. The consultant said he’d ask.

The boyfriend came to visit after class. He left when visiting hours ended, as he needed to get home and eat dinner. I didn’t eat much of dinner myself – the salty chicken meat didn’t appeal to me at all. Feeling hungry later, I broke open the pack of gummy candies my KL friend bought me. I may regret that in time to come because as everyone knows, I can’t stop at just one with snacks. In fact I tend to go overboard.

I decide to watch TV until I fall asleep, which is my latest night-time strategy. The last time I did it, I didn’t even get to catch the end of “America’s Next Top Model”, bleh. It’s “American Idol” tonight, so I can either be lullabied to sleep or kept awake by the awful howlings of the weaker contestants.

The cannula in my left forearm twinges strangely, but it’s not in any danger of coming out – the transparent dressing will make sure of that. The tubes are taped down two, three times, so the slightest pull makes me stop and check my lines, but with no danger to the tubes since there’s built-in slack before they get yanked out of me. Now to practise sleeping with one tube crossing my body.

Breakfast is macaroni soup, just as I ordered. The Western option was toast, and I only take my toast with real butter, none of that vegetable oil crap, so I declined. At least here in the new wing, they actually send someone up to get your order for the next day, instead of just assuming you want the same thing every day.

The only thing of interest that happens between breakfast and lunch is that two nurses come in to give me a wipe-down. Lunch is fish, I am so sick of fish. While I am attacking the vegetables, the lady doctor from Monday night reappears. She knows what her presence means to me.

“Sorry, but I have to put another plug in you.”

What! Then what is this PICC line for? They lied when they told me no more needles! I say as much to the doctor. She admits that she too was surprised when they ordered the plug insertion. She tells me that etoposide can’t go in through the same line as the other 2 drugs, not even if they put in a multi-way plug. Confused, I tell her that when I had the femoral line in, everything was plugged in there. “Yes,” she agrees, but then points out that there were 3 separate lines leading out from the femoral vein. I glare at the etoposide for not playing nice with the other drugs.

I know who to blame for this. Damn you, lymphoma. If you had a house, I’d splash red paint on it. If you had a dog, I’d… throw a twig at it. (I can’t entertain the thought of kicking innocent animals, even if they were my enemies’ pets.) Yes, AT it, not FOR it. If you had children, I’d wait outside their school, then extort money from them. But dammit, you don’t have any of those things. So I’ll settle for flooding you with drugs and watching with satisfaction as you shrink and die. This is for the needles, biatch!

The plug insertion hurts, as usual, but I’m resigned to it this time around. Besides, it’s on my arm, not on the back of my hand, so I still have mobility. Slightly put off my lunch by the pain, I finish off the fish and lie down for a nap. By the time I wake up, my arm has stopped hurting.

Perhaps I should ask if it’s possible to adapt my PICC line so that it can have multiple lines, like my femoral line. I don’t like the idea of having this cannula taken out and then put in again every time I go in for chemo. Sure, it stops hurting after a while, but IT STILL HURTS. They can’t leave the cannula in for a long time, unlike my PICC line, because it has an expiry date of one week from insertion. I don’t know why.

Teatime comes and I get chocolate cake with chocolate sauce, and what looks like blackcurrant jam in between. Something like a black forest cake, but without the sprinkles and the cherries and cream. I know you people won’t believe that hospitals give patients CHOCOLATE CAKE, so I took a picture for proof. Yay cake! It’s not the best, in fact it’s just chocolate sponge as opposed to a true, moist chocolate cake, but I’ll take what I can get.

Later a nurse comes in and delivers even worse news. The cannula on my left arm has to be replaced EVERY DAY. So every damn day, they’re going to pull it out and then find another vein to jab? I only have so many veins! Why couldn’t they have put in a double-lumen PICC line so that all my drugs could go in through that? I’m going to ask the doctor the next time I see him/them. If it turns out that a double-lumen PICC line exists, and there’s no practical reason to reject its use, I’m going to point out all the unnecessary pain they put me through just because someone didn’t think of ordering a double-lumen PICC. It’s bad enough I have to contemplate a new cannula for each round of chemo, but dealing with it every day, especially if an alternative is available, borders on foolish.

I mean, yes, no one said dealing with cancer was easy, but it’s not like I’m asking for an instant cure, yes? I am just asking to be pricked less, ya?

I think I want to switch menu choices entirely, the dishes are exactly the same as they were the last time I was in hospital. The only difference is the addition of a salad, but seeing how I cherry-pick the tomatoes and pineapple bits out and leave the rest, it’s not much of an improvement. Perhaps for Friday, I shall choose Chinese or Malay or something. Anything to avoid eating more carrots and peas. I am getting quite tired of carrots and peas.

Would you like to know how I spend my time, other than whining about food and needles? I read Draco/Ginny fanfic. I’m in the process of doing research to write my own, as well. It’s an idea that’s been percolating in my brain for years, since I graduated from JC, and I’ve had to update some details to accommodate the plot of the 6th and 7th books. So yes – in order to escape from the dreariness of IV pumps and hospital food, I go to Harry Potter land. There’s no cancer in the Potterverse, but there is spattergroit…

I guess it’s because they did such a good job of controlling my side effects, that I’m feeling enormously bored and useless. If I were puking my guts out, for instance, I’d be busy being miserable and sick. Instead, I feel fine, which misleads me into thinking that I can still lead a normal life. Except I can’t. I’m tethered to 2 machines, and if something drops on the floor, I can’t pick it up. I can’t even reach the hand sanitizer, it’s juuuuuust about out of reach for me because of the IV lines. I shall ask about the viability of shifting all my lines to one arm and putting the IV machines on one pole, then at least I can wheel it to the toilet with me. This ward doesn’t have the triple-line machine that I used in High Dependency, so they have to use multiple single-line machines instead.

So bored of this bed. Let’s see where in the Dreaming I can escape to instead.

I wake up and the saline drip bag is nearly empty, so before they change it out and reconnect me to a new bag, I ask to go brush my teeth while I’m still drip-free. Breakfast is French toast with maple-flavoured syrup. It seems there are only 2 menus on offer, so every alternate week I get the same choices.

At 9.30am, a nurse comes in with a green hospital gown for me to change into. I figure they’re just getting ahead of themselves, but then a porter shows up with a trolley and says they’re going to take me down to Diagnostics. I’m surprised by this, because my appointment isn’t until 2.30pm. This means I wasn’t able to do a 4-hour fast!

The gown is one of those awful open-in-the-back kinds, and they give me a pair of disposable panties to change into. I don’t know what’s wrong with the underwear I have on, but whatever, just do whatever they want. They unhook my IV drip bag and I settle on the trolley.

It’s a long trip because Diagnostics is in the old wing, so I roll through a lot of corridors before they finally park me in the Angiography recovery room. As I’m rolled into the room, a large clock tells me it’s 10.05am. The nurses have the radio on, and without anything to entertain me, I decide to sleep.

Finally someone comes for me and I’m rolled to another corridor, and they leave me there again. Bored with being parked here and there, I sleep while waiting for my turn. Eventually I enter what looks like a small operating theatre.

No one in there is a doctor, because they tell me they’re waiting for the doctor to arrive. They lay green cloths all over me, and clean off my right arm with loads of alcohol. My arm is extended perpendicular to my body, supported by a board wedged under the mattress I’m lying on. I ask to go to the toilet, and someone brings a bedpan. They must have drawn lots or gone by seniority or something, because she doesn’t seem too happy about her task. I don’t blame her.

The bedpan goes under me, and suddenly I find myself suffering from Shy Bladder Syndrome. I want to pee but it’s just not working! It’s a couple of minutes before I can resolve the problem, and then I take such a long time that the nurse looks at me and asks if I’m actually managing to empty my bladder. I assure her that I am, I just didn’t expect that it would take this long. I guess it’s just hard to overcome a lifetime of “don’t wet the bed!”, so I find it weird to pee while lying down in bed. But eventually the job is done.

The doctor comes in, and asks me a few questions to put me at ease. He tells me Delta Goodrem had lymphoma too, and I say I only remember she had cancer but I couldn’t remember what kind. Turns out he’s Australian, so he followed it quite closely. He uses an ultrasound probe or something to find my vein. I can’t be sure because the screen was behind my head and out of my field of vision.

The doctor explains briefly about the procedure, and reiterates that the pain won’t last long. “It’s short-term pain for long-term gain,” he consoles me. Yeah I know, that’s how I comforted myself too. After this PICC line is in, they no longer have to poke me for blood or IV drips. The nurse hands him a needle and syringe, and I feel the poke.

That’s not the bad part. As with most injections, it only really starts to hurt when the plunger is depressed, due to the pressure building up. I endure it for a while, then I hit my limit and mutter “Shit”, by which time he’s already moved on to the next injection site. Thankfully, the anaesthetic works fast, and I don’t feel the subsequent injections much.

This doctor works really quick! Next thing I know, I can feel him sliding the catheter in, and then he’s asking me to take a deep breath and hold it while they take an X-ray. The image comes out, and he declares, “Okay! The catheter’s in your heart. Can you see the tube?” Indeed, I can, and all that’s left is for him to stitch down the wings of the catheter so “you don’t pull it out when you have a nightmare”, according to him. He gives me more anaesthetic to make sure I won’t feel the needle stitching me up. Well I did feel a small prick, but it was very minor and registered more as a sensation than as pain. Job done, he leaves the nurse to do the clean-up. There’s kind of a lot of blood in the area, eeeep.

Once clean, the nurse dresses the catheter site with gauze and a transparent dressing, then another layer over that to hold down the bit of tube that’s flopping around outside. This tube is capped off with a blue screw cap, and it’s going to be my good friend for the next few months.

They park me back in the recovery room while I wait for someone to come get me and send me back to my ward. This time it’s a different porter, and he chats amiably with me, telling me to stay positive. When I get back to my room, my aunt is already there. My mum is apparently down in the pharmacy buying more dressings. The nurse says I have to stay in bed for 4 hours, no walking around and stuff.

My colleagues come to visit, and they bring the new Math coach. Lunch is fish, potatoes and vegetables. After my colleagues leave to go back to work, they start me on Rituxmab, phase 1 of my chemo. The drugs leave me amazingly sleepy and lethargic. Raising my hand takes great effort, and I let it flop back down. All I want to do is sleep, so that’s what I do.

By dinnertime, the Rituxmab is done dripping into my system, and the lethargy lifts a bit. Dinner is a chicken chop, soup, and green pandan rice. Heedless of the subtleties of flavour in the rice, I spoon soup over it for gravy. I am all alone now, as my mum has headed back to KL to consult with an oncologist at University Malaya Medical Centre about transferring my case there.

When I first got back from the procedure, I complained that my arm hurt and I had to hold it at a certain angle, because otherwise it would start hurting bad. It’s not a sharp kind of pain, more like a dull ache, but it still feels icky. A nurse came in to press my right hand, and I tried clenching it. It didn’t do as well as my free left hand, so I thought maybe water retention was preventing it from having a full range of motion, like the last time. Then again, it could just be the Tegaderm dressing on the back of my hand, restricting movement. I can type with both hands now (what a relief!) although there’s still a tiny bit of discomfort at the puncture site for the PICC.

It’s approaching 11pm and I feel sleepy. The nurse comes in to deliver medication to my roommate, so I ask her to assist me in going to brush my teeth. I could handle it on my own, but it’s tricky with a bum arm. While I’m brushing my teeth, she brings in a green basin and puts it in the shower area. They need to measure urine output, so I guess I have to pee in that.

Teeth brushed, I survey the basin. The simplest way to describe is “plastic chamber pot”. It’s basically a potty for adults, and I can feel myself regressing a bit more. Once I’m settled in bed, I get a new wristband, because the old one got wet from the antiseptic during the procedure. The night nurse shows great attention to detail by making sure she rounds off the corners when she snips off the excess length of the wristband.

I have to type this one-handed as my right hand is now host to a plug and an IV drip, and it’s a little bit painful so it’s off-duty at the moment. No, not the drip, the plug, that’s what’s causing the pain.

My mother wakes me from the last uninterrupted sleep I’ll have for a while. I have to pack my stuff for the hospital. At least I’m spared the bother of packing clothes, since those are provided. I make sure to put in all my electronics, as well as a pack of gummies my friend brought me.

At 2pm, my bosses show up, driving a white Honda Civic hybrid. The interior of the car is so colour-coordinated, the seatbelts are beige to match the tan leather seats. Wow.

It’s a long wait at the hospital. They don’t have the single room I requested, but they’re waiting for something else to become available. Eventually a 2-bedder is free, so I move my stuff in. I’m joined shortly by a Filipino lady.

A doctor comes in, holding a tray bearing the dreaded yellow sharps box. She says she has to put a plug in me. What a disappointment. Another doctor, Dr Yap, comes in as she’s prepping my hand. He’s the one who did my femoral line insertion. The needle goes in, and he reminds me to breathe. It doesn’t dissipate the pain or the fear, but at least I won’t turn blue. I keep my eyes closed for a very long time, because she’s taking blood from me and I can feel it. When I open them again, she’s wiping blood off my hand, and there is a syringe full of my red circulatory fluid. *sniffles*

I complain that my hand hurts. It’s not really the plug, because it’s not the kind of pain that comes from having something in your hand. No, it’s more a burning, stinging pain. I sit on the bed and pout. Dinner arrives, it is fish and potatoes and salad and watermelon. As usual, I ignore the long beans that accompany the fish.

After dinner, I take a shower. The hot water’s much hotter in this new wing. When I’m all fed and cleaned, my mother’s job is done. After she leaves, I switch the TV to HBO, where I saw ‘The Patriot’ while channel-surfing.

This is one movie that my sister and I could (and have) watch(ed) repeatedly. There is Heath Ledger in it, at his youthful heroic best. There’s Jason Isaacs, who’s absolutely delicious as the evil British officer. You know he’s the bad guy, but he’s just so gorgeous and graceful that you can’t help but to like him a little bit. Just like how we adore Lucius Malfoy, even if he’s a stupid, bigoted Death Eater. Heck, I don’t refer to him as Lucius when it’s in the movies. I call him Pimp Daddy Malfoy, because he’s Daddy Malfoy and he is one fly pimp daddy! Gotta love the cane…

A nurse comes in to set up my IV drip, and she informs me that they’ll be taking more blood from me tomorrow. Again?! I ask if they’ll be using the plug, and she scrunches up her face in sympathy. “No, I think they’ll poke you,” and I’m indignant because here is a perfectly good plug from which to draw blood! I shall volunteer my right arm with its larger veins, less hassle for all involved.

My line insertion is such an important procedure that I’ll have to fast for 4 hours beforehand. No lunch for me. The doctor earlier told me that sometimes, they do sedate patients if they get too anxious, so presumably the fast is to ensure I won’t choke on food residue if they have to sedate me. I can’t decide if I want sedation. I generally prefer to be unconscious while things are done to me, but at the same time it might be interesting to see how they insert the line with the aid of fluoroscopy.