"Paint it Black"...

Fight Club Round 3 in, done and over with.

I was fine. No wheezes, no redness, no heart stopping/starting/dancing about.

The nursey Bernard was a little cack-handed with the needle...I have a very mangled, swollen and bruised hand from her lack of prowess with a cannula. What I need is a smack head. Those smack heads can get a needle into any vein they want...

I also have to paint my finger and toe nails with a dark colour. This stops UV infiltrating the nail bed and reacting with the Taxotere...hopefully preventing my nails coming out. My toenails are generally painted black or Rouge Noir anyway...like I intimated before, I am an old goth at heart.

I am not sure if I have written anything about Dexamethasone. They give you this as part of the chemo...it does useful things, like stopping your brain swelling.

I don't get on with Dexamethasone...I have been told by the docs it is related to Dextroamphetamine. Those soul boys didn't call their drug of choice Dexys Midnight Runners for nothing. I go to sleep and a few hours later I am up, up, up. I could run a marathon on Dex or dance all night (but not to Come on Eileen, I draw the line at that). One woman who took Dex for her chemo told me 'my teenage childrens' mates like to come around when I have had chemo because they like to see the mad woman with cancer on speed....".

My experience for Round 1 and 2 is 8mg IV of Dex: I am up in the middle of the night for the four days following chemo. Today, I had 20 mgs of the bloody stuff. I have to take a load more over the next 3 days...

...it should be worse then, seeing as they have more than doubled the intial dose. Perhaps I will indeed take up marathon running. Or perhaps revive those 1920s Endurance Dance Marathons? (They Shoot Horses, Don't They? !!!). I have never been much of a self medicator...never felt the need for uppers and downers...I opened my door of perception a few times...but I have never needed to medicate myself to get through the night...now, at the age of 41, I am medicated to stay up all night.

Party round mine then...?

"It's a chemical thing..." Keith Richards, on not sleeping for nine days due to narcotic cocktails in the 1970s.