21th February 2019 - Out of the hospital

Despite the lack of sleep, I got up in the morning feeling much better and, indeed, I was soon allowed to leave the hospital.

Although most of the drugs in the Folfirinox therapy are administered on the first day, the last one (called 5FU) is delivered slowly over a period of 48 hours via a small pump. So I left the hospital with this thing attached to my belt, which I would then need to have disconnected the following day.

I was very happy to see the children later in the day - they asked me how it was and I did my best to provide as much reassurance as possible. In reality, I was experiencing a few of the side effects that I had been warned about and that would occur at every cycle: neuropathy in my fingers (a feeling of tingling, whenever I touched something cold), hiccups and a general achy feeling in the abdomen. But nothing I could not deal with – in the end I could not really complain about how the first cycle had gone.