From the horse's mouth

We thought you'd like to get Quent's perspective on his treatment, so here it is, in his own words..

Feint hearted readers stop here, no really, this is not pleasant. Your choice then....

Woke up this morning, it is good to be home in my own bed, the hospital matresses are covered in rubber so get sweaty after a while. Did not have the strength to sit up or even roll over. My arms felt like someone has battered me with a baseball bat. When you rigor, you tense your muscles really hard, and shake violently, afterwards your muscles feel bruised. If I wanted to scratch my face, I generally had to push my elbow with my spare hand in order to get the strength to lift my hand up - that was just after the first rigor.

Over the week in hospital you regularly have your "Obs" done. If you are in a bad way this will be every 15 minutes. It includes taking your temperature, heart rate, Blood Pressure etc. Taking Blood Pressure became agony, as the pump up cuff crushes your bicep already suffering from the rigor and then slowly releases its air. The regular cuff crushing did seem to add to the feeling of having been beaten by a baseball bat.

Pump you up and wring you out. When you first get into hospital, they have to put you on a drip for 3 hours to over hydrate you, before pumping in the IL-2. Over the week the IL-2 adds to add the fluid in your body, you ankles swell up and your knuckles and various joints can hurt. It can increase your body weight by 15% (after that the medical team won't give you any more IL-2). I went up 3 kilos (about half a stone) over 24 hours. At the end of the week they wring you out with a few fruzamide pills, they seem to have a fairly quick response to increase your pee. This in turn makes you thirsty as hell, no point in drinking out of anything but a pint glass.

After the first does of IL-2 I puked up, I did not eat anything after that for the whole week. The sickness continued even long after I had emptied my stomach. Hanging on tight to the nice warm feeling cardboard bowls you get in hospital I managed to produce quite a few of the bright green bowls of bile I've not seen since they actually removed my kidney. Amazing, a week without food, and I was not in the slightest bit hungry. Starting to eat again now but nowhere near full portion size.

I have a lot of coughing fits, apparently it is to do with "capillary leakage". One of the many "interesting" side effects of IL-2 is that fluid leaks into your lungs. After coughing for a while you tend to cough up a tiny amount of what looks like spit, problem is the coughing fit can carry on for quite a while even if you are dog tired and just want to go to sleep. Your intestines leak as well, which is why you get diarrhoea.

Farting when you have diarrhoea is a dangerous game, you may think that you are connected with loads of pipes and wires, and you are incredibly tired and therefore can't get out of bed. But you had better up your game, because there is a lot at stake! Get a commode put within reach of all the pipes and you learn!

My skin was OK whilst in hospital, but since getting home it has started "hardening" and is now beginning to shed nicely. I guess over the next day or so the "full on" snow storm will start where it comes off quicker than Helen can Hoover it up. It started feeling dry and really sore round my eye sockets - the nurses said my eyes had started to look sunken and dark. The solution is Aqueous cream but as Helen put it on, from being sore, my eyelids felt like they had been set on fire!

The "soft bits" peel first (yes all of them), with soles of the feet last. That tends to take a couple of weeks, at the moment my tummy, hands, arms and face are going. I looked in the mirror, I look about 80, my skin turned a sort of grey - white colour. The skin on my face no longer fits it, I am not sure if my face shrank, or the skin got baggy either way it don't look good.

I seemed to spend a large proportion of last week asleep, which was a shame for my sister who came miles to see me. I was asleep when she first arrived, and even when I awoke, I did not really open my eyes as I was so tired.

Unfortunately it did not stop me opening my mouth. The pethidine means I tend to talk more in my sleep when under treatment. This gave Helen and the nurses some giggles as it was generally nonsense.

Whilst all this sounds pretty grim, in reality I am very happy to take it because whilst still not certain it feels like I am on my way to getting the ultimate - a cure from kidney cancer that has spread to the lungs.

That's enough from me. The treatment does make you incredibly tired. Time for my afternoon sleep.