Secondly, he is gravely ill and is confined to a wheelchair with a type of creeping paralysis that normally cuts the lives of its victims very short.
There is no antidote or cure for powerful vincristine being injected through the spine, just an agonising, creeping paralysis of the body until the heart finally stops.
The usual prognosis is gradual immobility, followed by creeping paralysis, leading eventually to death by suffocation or pneumonia as the respiratory muscles seize up.
Symptoms include fever and creeping paralysis from the feet upwards, all of which the patient has shown.
The apprentice mechanic died almost a month later, suffering from a slow and agonising creeping paralysis of his body.