A lot of women with breast cancer have surgery as the first part of their treatment, not me, I was different. My cancer was an aggressive grade 3 tumour and it was discovered that it had already spread to at least one of the lymph nodes in my armpit. Because the cancer cells were on the move around my body already the best way to improve my chances of being cancer free was to blast my whole body with chemo to kill any cancer cells, anywhere. Also, my surgeon wanted to shrink my lump before I had surgery, there could have been a chance I might not need a mastectomy.
My first chemo was scheduled for Thursday 5th December, just 3 weeks after I had been diagnosed. Whenever I tried to imagine what chemo might be like, all I could envisage were scenes off the TV or things I had seen in films where people got really, really sick! I was so scared that this would happen to me. I thought I would be spending the next 18 weeks too tired to get out of bed, throwing up all the time. My surgeon had been very reassuring about the effects of chemo when I was first diagnosed, she said some people don't suffer too badly from side effects and they actually carry on going to work during their treatment, as this was from someone in the medical profession I tended to believe her. My Gran had chemo when she had non-hodgkins lymphoma about 10 years ago and she was never sick.
I always find myself wanting to write 'I don't know how I did it?' and looking back now I think I just went into autopilot, I had no choice but to have chemo, no going back, no running away, what was the alternative? The phrase I used at the time was that I just had to 'suck it up' and that's how I approached the inevitable, with grim determination. Its strange to admit that I had a weird curiosity about how it was going to affect me, when would my hair fall out? What would I look like bald? I spent the 3 weeks before chemo in a hospital whirlwind, having scans and tests, but still working full time, only having time off for appointments, I even went into work the morning before my chemo, I was bonkers. I just wanted that final bit of my normal independent life for as long as possible until I had to put it all on pause to go through treatment.
The actual process of receiving chemo is surreal, having something so poisonous put into your body shouldn't be so relaxed and normal. It's as if you expect a more dramatic fanfare for the hideousness that's about to happen, an explosion, an alarm, an electric shock... The reality is such a non-event. You are handed a cocktail of anti sickness pills to swallow whilst you sit in a comfortable chair with a lovely nurse chatting to you. All the time she is slowly and gently injecting syringe after syringe of toxic chemicals into the canula on your hand. You look round the room and everyone else is the same (albeit a lot older than me!) sitting there patiently waiting for the drugs to go in, no drama, just chatting with a friend or reading a book.
After about an hour, the nurse takes the canula out and you're allowed to go home with just a plaster on your hand and a bag of anti sickness drugs to show for it. You feel pretty much the same as when you walked in. I had a made a chemo plan with my parents, I was going to stay at their house whilst recovering from each chemo so that I could completely relax and concentrate on getting better. So after my first chemo we had to drive back to Solihull, a 45 minute journey, I sat in the back of the car with Mum clutching a bottle of water and a plastic bag in case I was sick. Before I had left the hospital my chemo nurse scared me by saying that if I was going to suffer from sickness it could come on quickly, so I was prepared to put the bag into action at any second.
It never happened, my worst nightmare never actually materialised. Minutes passed, and then hours
passed and I still felt fine. I know I am extremely lucky to have tolerated the chemo this well for the
first few days. I took my anti sickness meds religiously and after 6 days I thought I had got away lightly with the dreaded side effects. Sadly, I was wrong, almost one week after chemo I woke up in the middle of the night , sweating and shivering, with a temperature over 38 degrees. This is what the Oncologist warns you about, this is what the Chemo Information session warns you about, this is why you are given a 24 hour emergency helpline number and a red card to flash in every A&E department to ensure you get treatment immediately. A high temperature is a sign of infection, chemo destroys your natural immune system so you need to go to hospital to be given intra-vinous antibiotics. Damn! I thought I had got away with it, this had just got a lot more serious, up until now I hadn't felt like a cancer patient, I hadn't even lost my hair yet, but now my sister was driving me to A&E in the middle of the night. It was the beginning of the longest six days of my life, I had an allergic reaction to the antibiotics they gave me, then another temperature spike, then my white blood cells went too low for them to allow me home. I was given a private room at the hospital as I had to be protected from infection but there was no phone signal, no wifi, I was so bored, and lonely and miserable.
A few days after I was discharged, my hair started falling out. When I returned to the hospital for my second chemo I felt like I had earned my place in that waiting room, there were no strange stares from other people trying to work out who the patient was, it was bloody obvious now. The photo below is me having my second chemo, on Boxing Day 2013, Merry Flippin' Christmas!!!
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