Round One - Part Two

We use a car to get home on a treatment day, and whilst on our way that Monday evening we got a call from a nurse saying that I needed a blood test followed by a consultation the following morning, as a prelude to a follow up infusion on Friday. We persuaded the nurse that as I had had a blood test that very day I did not need another one, so she agreed to cancel it, and the following morning I called the medical team and got the consultation changed to a phone call. As a result of the call they delayed the second round to 2nd July.

Then we got an unexpected message to say they could drain my lung again on Thursday or Friday before the infusion. We went for Thursday. This time they got out just 1.7 litres. Until the treatment starts to take effect the lung will continue to fill up, and we now know the monthly fill rate.

Then there was Friday. I needed a second dose of one of the drugs 8 days after the first, this time delivered in the outpatient unit, which is where the subsequent rounds will be administered. They sit you in a very comfortable chair, put in the catheter and then you doze off as the drug drips in. They keep you going by offering you a sandwich with a distinctive NHS curl to its dried out edges. Eating it was probably the worst part of the experience. However, I must now reveal that the Marsden harbours a secret. It's called 'Le Colombier'.

It's not actually part of the Marsden, but just opposite the side entrance. It's a very traditional but refined French brasserie which serves the kind of food Raymond Blanc's mother would have cooked. The bread is real French bread. The desserts include wonderful things like tarte tatin and creme brulee. It makes you feel like you are in Dijon or Lyon. Discovering it has given trips to hospital a completely different emotional character. But there's a catch.

It doesn't open for lunch till 12:00 and shuts at 15:00, creating a narrow window of opportunity. Guess when most of the treatment sessions run. It opens again for dinner at 18:00, by which time we are usually gone. So eating there is a rare treat. When I was in for the first round, Kam enterprisingly persuaded them to do a poulet frites as a take-away which she then smuggled into the ward. The Colombier staff were rather shocked at the request as they had never done a take-away before. They struggled to find a box, but they did in the end, and lunchtime was transformed.

At the end of the day on Friday after the sandwich and the infusion, plus the lung drainage the day before, I was feeling a bit rough and went straight to bed when we got back. That was a bad night, sleepless, breathless and lots of coughing, but by daybreak I felt much better.

This journey will clearly not follow a straight line, but then we never expected it to.