One long, long day...

Assalamualaikum wbt

Alhamdulillah, I've just had my 8th round battle with Mr Chemo today. As usual (and expected), it was a KO (and obviously, against me).

It was a bit hectic early in the morning, as I had to go to Royal Hallamshire Hospital a bit earlier than usual to firstly attend the induction for my last round of placement before the finals this May. Had a 15 minutes induction, went to the prayer room to offer my morning prayers, had a quick breakfast in the hospital's dining room before heading straight to that familiar place again, the O2 Day Case Unit. As my colleagues head to the ward soon after the induction to start their day as medical students, I started my day the other way round, as a hospital patient.

It will be my last 5 weeks of placement as a medical student, but unfortunately I will miss three weeks of it because of my treatment. And there is quite a lot of tasks and assessments that need to be sorted out within the two weeks that I have. O Allah, there is nothing easy except what You make easy and You make the difficult easy if it be Your will!

Today was my longest day ever, as I only left the ward at 510pm. There was a bit of a delay with starting my chemotherapy today as I came in with a bit of a flu and thus the nurses had to check with the doctor whether I am medically fit to have the treatment. They even at one point considered isolating me into a special room for obvious reasons of not wanting to spread my virus to other patients who are immune-compromised as well. In the end, they decided that my flu wasn't too bad and I didn't have a temperature anyway so things just went on as usual.

Alhamdulillah, I got Tony (one of the male nurses in the ward)to do my cannula today and he has never failed to get it in with his first attempt! As usual, my nausea got worse when I was called in to have the chemotherapy. It was really bad, horrendous in fact. The chewing gums didn't help this time around. It was so obvious that I was struggling that the nurse tried playing her part by asking me if there was anything she can do to help. I really, REALLY need to figure out plan B for my 9th round in two weeks time. What can I do?!

For the past month, I've been troubled a lot with saliva pooling in my mouth that I had to spit them out literally every two minutes. Which is quite unpleasant, as I hardly get any good sleep at all during the nights having to get up all the time to spit saliva out. So I discussed this with my consultant today to see what can be done. Being a medical student, I took the initiative to suggest my consultant to prescribe me some Hyoscine hydrobromide, which he duly agreed. I'll probably use them only when I really need to as these drugs can cause dry mouth and some other undesired side effects, which are rare but can be unpleasant should you get them.

In my next entry, I'll tell everyone about some interesting conversations I had with a few patients in the ward today. About death. Nantilah yer, bila dah much better. Sabor je la.

It's gonna be another long week ahead, but with the prayers and support of families and friends, I know I'll get through this. Insya Allah.

Wallahua'lam