Oh yes, there’s a bit I forgot actually, because the other interesting bit of the experience was they told me that I would have four cycles of this chemo, but also, because I was going to have so much chemo, and also they were going to, obviously, be taking blood samples all the time, they need to put a line into me and this is, well, it’s called a Hickman line, and what they did was, they drill a hole into your – and it sounds nasty this, it’s not drilling -they basically just put a hole into your chest and they take a line up, a plastic tube it is, under the skin, over the collar bone and down into the jugular vein. It sounds horrific, and when you hear it you think, What’s that going to be like?’ But in fact they put it in under a local anaesthetic. I was awake throughout, I didn’t feel a thing. It was again, quite an interesting experience because I’d never had any of these sorts of things before.

And it went in, and they dressed it all up and really, I mean I lived with that line for the next six or seven months, and it became part of me, and I even became completely unaware of it after a relatively short time. Looked a bit odd but it was, you know, I didn’t have any problems with it.

I do know that some patients do tend to reject the line and if that happens they have to take it out and re-do it, and that can be nasty. In my case, I didn’t have any problems, and I’m sure, I think it does vary from individual to individual, it became a part of my body, and in fact the worst bit was taking the line out again six months later, because they couldn’t get it out, the flesh had actually grown around the line and they had to cut down with, again, with a local anaesthetic, and sort of cut around the line before they could pull it out.

And how did you feel about having that Hickman line all that time? Did that bother you?

The Hickman line was a constant reminder really because you have to make, I found with the hospital that I was in, they were very keen to make sure that you took responsibility for your own Hickman line. Now some people can do it and some can’t but I would flush my lines to, because I had a Hickman with three tubes coming out, some only have one, some only had two. But if you keep it clean you’re less likely to get infections. And of course, you have a little hole here where the tube goes in and that never really heals, it’s just a tiny little hole where the tube goes in. But it’s really important to keep that clean and so I would do that myself with the wipes and things that the hospital gave you. So every day, two or three times a day, I would just keep that clean because that’s how the infection sometimes can get in. But it can be quite painful because it is like an open wound really and you do get left with a scar but there’re far worse things that can happen to you than just having a scar.

But I found it was quite useful because particularly when I was home for four, five, six days. Every day you need to clean the lines, change the valves on the lines, and I was quite happy to do that. it’s not for everyone, you know, if you don’t feel like doing it then that’s absolutely fine, you can get a district nurse in to do it. But for me it just felt that I was sort of managing it and that was fine.

Important thing is to keep it well taped up so that it doesn’t stretch the little hole, because that can be painful if it’s not properly taped when you sleep you can move it and then you wake up because it’s really hurting so. But as I say, for me it was, I’m not squeamish at all, for some people it might be a bit squeamish but you do get used to it.