So, the clock winds back to the Autumn of 2008 and my first experience of being part of a chemistry experiment.  I had no real idea of what chemotherapy involved, how it was administered or how it worked.  All I knew was that it made you feel sick.  Ironically, I’ve never felt ill with Hodgkin’s, it’s only the treatment that’s made me feel poorly.

The first surprise was the length of the ABVD regimen.  I thought 6 to 8 ‘cycles’ would take a matter of weeks, so I was gobsmacked when that translated into 6, or even 8 months.

I was very fortunate to be treated by the team at the Eden Unit at Wexham Park in Slough, a hospital that gets a bad press for a variety of reasons, but was and is a first class establishment in my eyes – at least from my experience of its cancer care.  A lesson I had to learn very early on was the need to be patient…there’s a reason we’re called that after all.  I got to treatment number 4 of a potential 16 part cycle and felt great that we (“we”, because it’s a team effort after all) were a quarter of the way through.  Two weeks later I felt down that we were only at treatment 5 – it didn’t feel like much of a milestone at all.  The next 7 months of fortnightly visits to Slough stretched out like an interminable chemical desert.

Eventually I got into a rhythm with the chemo.  I’d go into Wexham on a Friday morning feeling 36 years old and leave 4 hours later, feeling about 76.  I was lucky that the ABVD gave me no really difficult side effects to deal with and I was usually back at work by Wednesday of the following week.  Fortunately, my fast paced, thrill a minute roller coaster ride of a job as an accountant in Bracknell always gave me something to look forward to.  I just couldn’t wait to get back (but I’ll talk about work some other time).

I remember being in B&Q the Saturday morning after my first treatment lugging tiles around and thinking something along the lines of, ‘this is going to be a piece of cake’.  Sunday passed in a similar vein, but then Monday arrived…. .   After most chemo sessions they send you home with a party bag of drugs to try and counteract the various side effects.  The steroids I was taking kept me perky for a couple of days immediately following treatment, but that was followed by a slide into flu or hangover like symptoms for a couple of days afterwards.  The pattern repeated itself with Groundhog day-esque predicability until the treatment finished.

That was the toughest aspect of ABVD – simply the monotony of it, the routine.  The post chemo bounce back to feeling human again got a little lower each time, so each time I was getting that bit more worn down.  It was partly patience, letting go of that need to rush through and taking each day as it came that helped me get through.  You learn, very quickly, when having treatment how you have to change your own mindset, choose your mood and just take it as much as you can in your stride.  It isn’t always easy – in fact there are occasions when it’s been impossible.  I’m sure even the most positive minded people have had days when they’re just feeling too ill or too angry to distance themselves from their treatment and see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Fortunately you soon learn that those moments pass.

After 6 months the scans looked good and it was a cause of some celebration when they removed my PICC line and told me that I didn’t need the remaining 4 cycles or 8 sessions of chemo.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a brief reprieve.  ABVD had been merely an aperitif before the main course, a skirmish before full blown hostilities….