Wayward.......

I get one extra week to recover post surgery and I decide to eat!
Every chemo session I stress about those dreaded scales.
'Up you go now, and we will weigh you.'
Unlike a lot of women out there, each time I step on those blasted scales I'm prayin'.....please let my weight be up, please let it be up!
I don't have a scales in my house, so I can only check every three weeks at the hospital.
For the first three chemo sessions it was going down, down, down!
Post surprise surgery, for that whole week (cause I was feeling a little sorry for myself) I ate all the bad things, pasties, carrot cake (there is carrots in it so it must be healthy!), full fat butter on everything, Indian take away (twice!), buns from the bakery (which as a terrible form of temptation is located across the street from my house...they now know me by name, I go in there so often...BAD!). I had corners for hip bones and I am skinny enough to audition for America's Next Top Model.
No Weight = No Chemo = No Finish Before Christmas :(
Docetaxol Day.....heart thumping, shoulder blades vice tight, STRESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
First the scales....up four pounds...wooo hooooooo.....I make a mental note to thank Jenny and Claire, the ladies in the bakery for taking such good care of my sugar craving.
Next, approval from surgeon to go ahead with chemo. Check.
Finally Im staring down the orange black bag of Docetaxol. It looks hazardous. The nurse hooks me up to the  drip and lists off another long list of side effects. I'm not really listening. Its four o'clock and with all the tests  and consultation I have been in the hospital since 9am and have had no snooze. I'm tired and cranky. I imagine what the nurse would do to me if I growled at her, I decide against it. She is, after all, hovering over me with a needle. In my head I think, 'Go AwAy lady...all I want to do is sleep.'
Docetaxol ladies in the treatment room, are identifiable by a range of dark nail varnish on their finger nails. I look down at mine, they are dark red. The colour doesn't suit me but it was the darkest shade I had in my sparse nail polish bag. It's for when your nails fall out....what? My nails will fall out.....bet they didn't write that in the 'Coping with Chemotherapy' handbook.
Supposedly painting the nails keeps the light from getting at them and reduces the chance of them falling out....who knows, Im not really convinced but I, like the other ladies, having no hair, no eyebrows, no eyelashes and no boob wasn't prepared to take the chance and I'm damn well going to paint my nails, even if the colour is rotten.....just so as there is a chance that they won't fall out.
I shift around in the chair...oh look, what does this remote control do....
ARghhghhghhhhhhh, holy J***s, my chair tilts back and flips up a foot rest, sending me rocketing back into a semi-lying position. My boyfriend tries not to laugh at me, but I can see him smirking. I throw him a couple of dagger looks from my eyes, smiling sweetly at the nurse who is beside me.
'The chairs are remote controlled and recline.'
Now she tells me.....
I feel completely uncomfortable and trapped, hooked up to a drip bag, for an hour. Drip, drip, drip, toxic, drip, drip, drip, chemicals, drip, drip, drip, poison, drip, drip, drip....ughhhhhh, how long has it been now, I ask.
Five minutes.
Drip, drip, drip, crossword puzzle, drip, drip, drip.
How long now?
Ten minutes.
Drip, drip, drip, soup and sandwich trolley, drip, drip, drip, no thanks, drip, drip, drip.
How long now?
Fifteen minutes.
Drip, drip, look out the window, drip, drip, so tired, drip, drip, drip, Cancer - I hate you so much, drip, drip.
I sleep.
I wake up with a start.
How....
He cuts me off.
Ten minutes left.
WOOOOoooo HOOOoooo.
Ten minutes. Maybe if I count 60 elephants ten times that will pass it quicker.
Oh, come on, come on, come on, get this f'en thing out of my arm.
Finally, at five o'clock I get to go home. I'm so tired, I practically drag my limbs behind me.
And into bed....aghhhhhhh BED.
Steroids and anti-sickness tablets are consumed. I put the bucket by my bed, a permanent fixture now in my room. I'm prepared for the pukes, a long night of puking and retching and bile and sweat and grossness.
It doesn't come for me this time. I sleep a couple of hours and feel the nausea but take my medication and I make it all the way through to the next day in one, puke free, piece!
Steroids are great, I buzz around the place for two days, cleaning the house, sweeping up the backyard, surviving comfortably on about four hours sleep.
Then the dreaded side effects...the list is long and thankfully I didn't experience all of them.
Aches and pains and no sleep for about a week.
But no puke, Ill take pain over puke any day.
Eight days after my chemo I'm back to some kind of normal. I meet a friend of mine and she invites me to a lecture in the Arts Centre. I consider it and decide to go, it would be nice to get out, to socialise, to feel somewhat normal again, if even for an hour. I consider what to wear, what goes well with dark red nail varnish.
Eventually I chose something simple, grey sweater dress, tights and boots. I slip my new softie fake boob into the supported tank top, pinning it (I have been warned to pin it, so that it doesn't fall out!Eekkkkk).
We meet for a cuppa and a chat and go into the room for the lecture, I see a few curious looks my way, I am bald after all and realise that some people need to stare. I sit down and I am at the end of the table, directly opposite the speaker. Ah well, its always good to have a clear view.
The lecture starts, about 18 people in total, all sitting around an impressive mahogany table, kinda like a boardroom table.
It's an interesting enough discussion but still, I can't help yawning a bit, I'm tired, its almost 9 o'clock, nearly bedtime. I begin to look around the room at the paintings on the wall and I glance down at my hands, which are folded in my lap and the terrible nail colour.
OHHHHHhh NO!
My boob has wondered off...it's pointing at the right wall of the room. I look up, I can't be staring at my chest in the middle of a room full of strangers. Has anyone noticed? I glance down again and sure enough, left boob is pointing straight and centre, as you would expect and right fake boob has somehow managed to work its way slightly up and to the right, it is literally pointing to the wall on my right hand side. The speaker is looking in my general direction, supposedly trying to convey his point with meaningful eye contact....or else he is staring at my misaligned chest....
It suddenly gets very hot and I begin to fidget. Panic. If only, if only...if only I was sitting some place discreet and could  nudge the softie boob back into some normal position with the inside of my arm. Or better still, if I was alone, I could stick my hand down my top and reposition the blasted thing.
I glance at my friend, she hasn't noticed. YET! Oh no... oh no...
I pull on my coat and cross my arms over my chest.  My friend looks at me. I rub my arms a little, mimicking that I'm a bit chilly. I smile, bright and fake.  It's practically tropical in the room, full of 18 strangers but I'll be damned if my wayward boob is going to give me away.
How long left?
Another 30 mins......
At least Ill sweat off the carrot cake I've just eaten.......

Drip, drip (my sweat), drip drip, Cancer - I hate you so much, drip, drip, drip.

Five simple words to ruin your day......

Three chemo sessions down- three to go.
Just when you think you have things sussed....I know not to eat for about twelve hours before my chemo, I know that anti sickness drugs dont work for me for the first 24 hours after my treatment. I know what songs are the best ones to hum in my head when they are pushing the drugs through the syringe. I know how many bucket bags to get ready for the puking sessions, I know what type of food to have pre-prepared in the fridge for the day after. I know how often to space out my steriods and anti sickness medicine, I know when my body is telling me its time to go for a snooze. I know all these things after three sessions and now just to mess with your head, they are going to change the drugs.

Docetaxol.

I'm almost more nervous than when I started with my first round of chemo. I'm terrified that its going to be worse, this Docetaxol. And I don't know if I can take any more 'worse'. Annoying thing is that it doesn't appear like I have a choice.

Anyway, just to keep things exciting, they did get worse even before I sat into the chair for chemo number four.

My traitorous expander decided that it wanted out, it chickened out of Docetaxol and decided that it wasn't having any of it. Antibiotics -round two- didn't seem to make any difference to the enormous swelling and redness, so a trip to the consultant seemed in order.

For my troubles I got lanced, literally and syringed in the boob! Though I have to say, my surgeon is entertaining.

She is a bit of an enigma. At the very first day I thought 'How Rude!', now I know that she is not the 'huggy type', nor is she the 'hold your hand tightly while you cry a little' type. Nor am I, so I get her.
She is the 'no nonsense, we have a job to do, let's kick cancer's butt' type or the 'don't be asking stupid questions about your hair falling out as this is the least of your worries....as you have cancer!' type. I think she rocks.

So thursday morning, I roll into clinic with a honker of a boob and a sinking feeling in my tummy. I know as soon as I show her, she will say five simple, terrifying words, 'IT HAS TO COME OUT!'. ARghhhhhhhhhh - if a person can use up all their shit luck in one go, then surely over the last six months that is me!

Anyway, I flash her a glimpse of traitor boob and of course she makes a distinctly negative kind of sucking noise with her teeth and utters words, not the words I would have expected. 'We will just take a look'....

You know when you sit in the dentist's chair and he is looming over you with a needle and smiling menacingly behind a soft baby blue mask, and he says these stupid words 'the injects is the worst bit, everything else is plain sailing'. The injection stings and you relax a bit but  then, as he digs around in your mouth a few minutes later, ripping out old fillings or scraping out cavities and you, in your prone state are silently cursing him for the dirty rotten liar he is- because everything after the injection was downhill and only got worse!

So, my surgeon wants to take a look...is that good?...is that bad? will the expander stay? She barks at the nurse who is timidly standing by the door, her eyes darting left, right and centre, a shadow of petrification hanging over her. If she could, I know she would run from the room.

'Get a tray set up for me'. (order number one)
She legs it out of the room and comes crashing back in a moment later, implements rattling, packages of gauze and dressing rolling around the top of the trolley.
My surgeon comes back and curses, actually uses a bad word...I am stunned!
'Get half this shit off the trolley and set it up properly!'

Oh dear, I think my failed expander is causing my surgeon to have a bad day, as if its rejection is a personal affrontation to her skill. I understand, I take it a a personal affrontation to my body, the expander's weak will and wish to abandon me.

Baby nurse is replaced by older, wiser and more thick skinned substitute. Surgeon is mumbling what I imagine are profanities under her breath.  I am lying there on the bed trying so hard not to laugh...my consultant cursing, the nurses scurrying.

Two minutes later, laughing is the last thing on my mind.

She comes in and says, 'Im going to inject you, its the worst bit and everything else after is ok', ha ha ha...oh ya, learn that from the dentist did you, I don't believe you, this bit is going to be easy.
Two lidocain injections later and I find I'm the one who is using all the bad language, a fine flowing string of bad words tumble from my lips. But its ok cause I know she doesnt mind, its my way of not crying and I think she gets that.

A little digging around and the prognosis is the same, its going to have to come out. Those five words. Damnation!

So when is surgery...next week, next monday perhaps, I'd like to go see my parents at the weekend, so perhaps we could schedule in something for Monday or Tuesday...ha ha ha...fat chance!

Emergency surgery list this evening! Panic - operation today. I need to pack, I don't have any clothes with me, I'm supposed to be meeting friends later, my boyfriend is in Austria with work, I don't have anyone to bring me to the hospital, my house mate is not home, what am I going to do, arghhhhhhhhhhhh panic!

I go quickly home to pack a bag and come back to the hospital, I am distraught all the way home. Three whole months of pain and discomfort, saline expansion sessions, painful bra wearing, redness, antibiotics, no sleeping on my tummy and what...all for nothing. STUPID EXPANDER. Im back to square one, almost minus square one.

I go home and pack a bag alone, I organise my things and make my way back to hospital alone, I sit on the emergency bed and wait, alone. And I go to surgery at half eight at night but Im not alone. My surgeon is there and I know she will look after me, I know that she has been working since early morning and has seen and helped many people that day, I know that she has probably missed dinner in trying to organise a slot for me in the emergency surgery list and I know that she is on my side and will do her very best to look after me.

I know that if any one says anything bad about her, they had better answer to me.

The next couple of days after the surgery I wonder, how does she do it? how does she manage to get such a big object out such a small opening, my new scar along the base of my one time breast, a perfect two inch line, delicate and discrete, as if nothing had ever happened.