Bah Christmas-Cancer-Humbug!

Tis the season to be jolly. Mince pies, christmas pudding, chocolates, cakes, buns, biscuits, caramel treats....all sorts of lovliness. Pity I feel like barfing.

December and I feel Scroogie. I'm having a major Scroogie moment where all I want to do is banish Tiny Tim to the cold store and ration his lumps of coal to just one. Bah Humbug!

In the library the other day, I hesitated in taking my hat off - what is it? always with the hair - I was tired and didnt know if I had the energy to expose myself again. Dont worry, the only thing I was exposing was my head but still, its a heralding of my 'condition'. There were two computers across the way being used, one girl, she barely glanced at me. The other, and I have somehow developed a sixth sense about these things contained two ladies, relatively mature, in their mid forties. The hat comes off. I perceive them looking, their heads dip together, I hear them whisper, can periferally see them consult then both look up. Right...I feel particularly evil, so I look up and swivel my head, Damien-style and stare right at them....I see you, I mentally scream..and I know you're talking about me....HOW RUDE!
The older of the two offers a watery pity smile before bowing her head again. The younger lady can't even look at me. I glare...if only it was capable of running a small generator....this glare of mine...I would never need to pay an electricity bill again. BAH HUMBUG to you ladies and your badly permed updo!

I had a mini-pity party yesterday, just a mini one. It lasted for around three minutes. Thankfully, it was short lived. There was a girl in the coffee shop (Oh how we like to beat ourselves with the sticks of other people's perfection), she was gorgeous, I mean totally gorgeous, the most amazing flowing locks of coffee coloured hair, shiny and luscious, a walking advert for L'oreal 'Cause I'm Worth It!'. She had legs which went on forever, a waist the size of a thimble and the face...well, she turned around at the last minute, just when I was sheepishly, in a moment of weakness, reaching for my beanie cap to cover my patchy bald head. It was almost automatic, my tretcherous hand was inching its way, automaton across the table, in a real jesture of betrayal. Anyway, back to this Amazonia goddess, she was lovely, really really lovely, until she turned around and I realised, hey, she is just normal. Like all women. She has her flaws. It made me feel instantaneously better when I realised that she was not a reincarnation of a female Adonis. Shallow I know.

My hair has started to grow back. And its started to fall out. AGAIN! At the same time...how is this even possible? So I have new tufts of growth, like willowy rushes on my hair, interspersed with bald..... so amazingly attractive and a great conversation started, especially with complete strangers in the que at the supermarket. Though it does get a bit weird if they ask to touch it.

I think now that my hair is growing back and that I'm coming to the end of my chemo...yippeeeeee...I feel like Im about to re-embark into the real world again and I'm scared.
I'm not the same person I was six months ago, I can't just pick up the pieces and reboot my life. It will never be the same again. I will never be the same again.

I have the minor detail of radiotherapy to go through and five years of tamoxifen but the completion of the chemo seems to be the milestone, the marker for the road to recovery. Don't get me wrong, I'm setting my Sat Nav to that road and I'm high tailing it onto that track but I wonder what type of person I will be when I get onto that road. I wonder if I have lost a little of myself along the way?

It's hard to explain to someone who hasn't gone through all of this. I mourn the loss of a lot of things and especially the loss of the little bits of me that I won't be able to get back. I don't know if I will ever be able to walk into a room with the same confidence as before, to be able to approach situations the same way. This whole cancer business has left an unsightly mark, in actuality and figuratively on me and I needed a little time to shed a pseudo tear for the once Amazon within me. I will never be that way again, I've turned around in the coffee que so to speak and Ive realised that we are all not so different.

I wish it was over, properly over now, not just the last day of the chemo session but the ten days after where you feel particularly shit. But soon, soon, I will be reaching the end of my Everest climb.


Roll on christmas, some home cooking, some sleep, some mum and dad time and some well deserved rest.

Happy Christmas everyone. C x

The Baby Question

What seems like a million years ago, I was confronted with the decision of choosing between surgery or chemotherapy as the first step on this thing called my cancer journey. The choice was put forward to allow me to decide about babies.
I could start with surgery and have a window of a few weeks to make decisions about harvesting eggs, stimulating oestrogen and doing some further potential damage to my hormones. I was offered an emergency appointment with the fertility clinic as I had decided to go with surgery first, giving me approximately four weeks, back in July/August to try to gain information on this whole unknown area.
Fertility, pregnancy and babies was not something at 28 years of age that I had spent a great deal of time thinking about. So I waited for an appointment, juggling the pros and cons around in my head, soul searching to see if children was something I badly wanted.
Ask me pre-cancer diagnosis my attitude towards children and I would have probably have said something dismissive and  non-committal. Sure I have loads of time to be thinking babies...not until I'm mid-way through my next decade do I need to seriously consider 'The Baby Question'.
I had loads of time, more time than I actually needed to think about this issue. My appointment for sometime in July, arrived and was not timetabled till the end of November, months after my surgery window. So all the potential for egg harvesting etc. was pretty defunct as I am now three quarters way through my chemo and the damage is already done. Tamoxifen here I come. Potential early menopause; no escaping and five years of waiting and seeing.
When I eventually dragged myself to my fertility appointment in November, I had even considered not going and was subsequently in a wicked mood because I was thinking 'whats the point?'. I had resolved myself to the fact that I didn't want babies anyway so it's no big deal and practically pointless even going to the clinic.
But I went anyway.
Rule number one in coming to the clinic... you had to bring your partner. It said so in capital letters on the end of the appointments page...so I think that means that it is capitally important. On my high horse and in a wicked mood, as I already said, I felt totally and illogically slighted. What if I didn't have a partner to bring with me, I muttered in the car, on the drive to the clinic, practically running over a pedestrian or two for good measure.  Not only am I in the one boob, no hair department but now I'm potentially penalised for being single and wishing to go to the fertility clinic.  As a form of protest, I thought about boycotting the whole thing.  I imagined how people who find themselves in this situation and in a moment of desperation much seriously consider kidnapping some unsuspecting man and threatening him with some form of pain if he did not go along with their wicked ploy to deceive their way into the clinic.
Turns out I do have a partner and didn't need to resort to violence or crime, but I still felt in a huff, on behalf of those people.
Though on the day of the appointment I almost did resort to violence...on my partner. Walking in to the clinic he meets someone he knows, a very attractive looking, full haired women (I'm in a very unsightly beanie hat and have very little eyebrows remaining, so not feeling on top of my game in the attractive stakes!). She makes polite conversation and asks if we are going in for a swim (clinic is in a complex which contains a gym, library, coffee shop etc...any of these are plausable reasons to be going in the doors of this establishment would have done).  BUT NO.  In response to her query my boyfriend replies, 'oh, were just going into the clinic'.
Ground...open up... and swallow me! Now she probably thinks I have some kind of STI or strange mental illness, to go with my crazed look and equally crazed choice of head wear. The prospect of lying and saying were going to the coffee shop, or the library to renew membership...anything, anything but that....had not crossed his mind.
Ughhhh.
At least he is a terrible liar. A good characteristic I suppose.

So, after having a tiff at the reception desk, we make our way to the waiting area. About thirty empty chairs and us. I fill out the forms, all fifty million pages of them, and stare out the window. Disgusted at my inability.
Inability at what, I'm not sure, but I feel like a big let down. I don't know why, it's just that at 28, sitting in a fertility clinic is not the top of you're '100 things to do before I die' list.

Two minutes later I find myself in the office of the fertility man, can't pronounce his name, as its long winded and foreign and I'm too grouchy to ask him to repeat it (normally I'm good at that sort of thing). Anyway I take off my hat and hope that that speaks enough for the situation I find myself, being bald and all, but no, I need to go through in detail my diagnosis and treatment.

We talk about hormones, side effects, oestrogen stimulation and then he draws me a diagram. The body clock 35 self destruct diagram. I mean I subconsciously take on these subjects, through conversations with my older friends, clips from radio programmes, extracts from magazines, I know all about the 35 plateau.  things. After 35 years its down hill in terms of egg production.
So he charted out this graph, age on the bottom line, percentage of eggs on the vertical line. Ok, so Im with you Doc. Typical number of eggs and their decline as you approach 35. hmmm I get it, I get it. Then in red pen he draws my line...........Eeekkkkkkkk, really crap line, really really crap line, it goes down, rapidly. and by all accounts post tamoxifen in five years time, I would want to be strapped up to the starting block, having done my warm up and ready to run the baby making race right from the word go.
He mentioned my options and they went like this, stimulate ovaries at risk of messing with oestrogen post tamoxifen if the little feckers are on a go slow. Wait to see naturally if the lights come back on after the extended five year power cut, or take your uterus and plant someone else's fertilised egg in there.
I'm not a prude, I think, and I'm all for medical progression in every field. When he said this I was uncomfortable, someone else's baby in me, not that it would be someone else's baby technically, it would be mine but would it? The room is getting very hot now and I'm beginning to feel uncomfortable. I don't know if I could do that, in fact I don't know if I can do any of that, babies, oestrogen, pushing, melon...ughhhhhh.
We shake hands, I say I'll come back in eight months when I know what drug regime I'm on and we will talk further.

As we leave I pass out through the waiting area. There are three couples sitting there. They all look up as I swing open the revolving doors. Each of them have some kind of soft desperation in their eyes, well, the women anyway, and I understand how hard it is to not be able to do the one thing that you thought you could always do, the one thing that you were made to do, the one thing that others are doing all the time, all around you. For a moment they all look at me and instant pity flashes through their faces and I can literally see it. They think, God, our situation is shite but at least I'm not as bad as her.

I jam my beanie cap back on my head and try not to cry on the drive home. I'm not even sure why, he hadn't told me anything I didn't know already. And I don't even know if I even want children, its something that I've never had strong feelings about.
However...
There is nothing like wanting something you're told you cant have.

Rookie Nurse!

I'm feeling a bit miserable after my chemo session and just want to crawl into bed and sleep for a week to get over the worst of the 'chemo chronics'.  But to top things off, one day after my chemo, I need to have an injection. There is just no escaping pointy sharp needles and discomfort.
So I drag myself out of bed by about 4 in the evening (dont judge me for being still in my pyjamas on these days post chemo - Im lucky that Im even lucid!). I feel like warmed up gruel which has been scraped off the sole of a long distance runner's shoe.
Knock, knock, knock...I limp-drag myself to the door and grunt a welcome.
Brittany is here...she's new. I havent seen her before. The whiteness of her uniform is slightly blinding....Welcome the District Nurse!
Chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter...it's like white noise. She is beaming, smiley, the picture of buxom health. I glare at her from beneath my beanie hat, if I had eyebrows they would be cocked in disdain.....OHhhhhhhhhh for the comfort of my bed.
But I remember my manners and smile semi-politely, leading the way to the front room and the icky injection which Ive just taken out of the fridge, where it was nestled somewhere between the avocados, brussel sprouts, pot of custard and my house mates cherizo sausage.....
I've not had Brittany administer an injection before but Im too tired to care at this stage, so I flop down onto the couch.
She waves her hand around my face, wiggling her fingers in my general direction. Im not really sure what she is at but I finally get the idea....she is showing off her engagement ring.
Im barely conscious and couldnt give a bats ass about her newly engaged status or the long drawn out story of the engagement process. Im more concerned by the fact that she openly admits to me that she is not supposed to be wearing the ring at work. I pucker a little frown and ask a tentative 'why'. The reason being that it is a place for infection and nurses are not allowed to wear jewellery.
Hmmmm, I'm a little nervous at this admission. She is freely telling me she is not supposed to be wearing a ring and Im infection prone...she looms over me....ARGGgghhhhhhh
She whips off the top of a large needle.
I hate needles, she giggles.
Yes love...but Im the one who has to endure it.....
Something tells me she is a newbie and hasn't done many injections. I don't know what quite gave it away but the stabbing action and feeling like a pincushion might have been the sealing evidence in the case of Brittany The Rookie Nurse!
Finally there is silence and she has left. Tomorrow the nurse will be back to change the dressing on my PICC line. Yipee - something to look forward to.

My PICC is my friend.
At the beginning, the prospect of getting it in terrified me. The potential that I would have to limit my movement and curtail my left hand was a bit daunting. The thought of a tube threaded through a vein in my upper arm right down into my chest seemed a bit surreal but then week after week I realised how much I rely on my PICC line to make my chemo treatments easier, to bypass the thin,weak veins in my left arm and to make sure that the chemo drugs do as little damage to my veins as is possible. Now, the PICC is my friend and I cant quite remember what it was like not having it.
In the shower I get to wear a sexy plastic arm bands to keep my line dry and then my functional white bandage, like a widows arm band, on my forearm for day time wearing...truely versatile with any outfit.

The one thing Im paranoid about with my PICC is the 2 centimetre window of movement. It cant come out beyond that two centimetres... (oh yes the picc line can move out of your arm if your not careful and its not taped down within an inch of its life). If it comes out, then they have to go through the whole thing all over again, re-xray, remove, replace......A terrifying fate, as the pain in insertion is not something I would wish lightly on anybody. Sometimes I wake up at night with palpitations over the prospect.

Each week with the regular nurses, Denis, Tracey and Hester, I remind them, 'please be careful of the length', I oversee with total ineptitude the dressing changing, eagle eyed when the measuring tape comes out, breath held for the reading, breath exhaled in a long outpour at the good news. Its not nearly near the 20cm mark yet, so Im safe.

Then BRITTANY happens.

She is being suppervised the next day in changing my PICC dressing. I tell myself not to be silly. Everyone must learn and its important to be supportive. Denis hovers nearby, his nervous energy making me jumpy. She is all chat, her ring removed from her finger, now that her supervisor is here. She chats and chats and chats and chats and chats and chats while putting together her bag of tricks, gloves, dressing, gauze, syringe; all unwrapped and placed on the tray.
Next, the unpeeling of the old dressing. She chats and chats and chats and chats.
ARGghgghghghhhhhhhhh, she has pulled off the stereo strip and i can feel a gerk on the line.
'Denis,' I mentally scream, 'Denis save me.'
 I look down and can see the little scab on the line where it used to be attached to my skin. The distance between scab and arm seems massive, THE LINE HAS MOVED.
The room starts to get very hot, my heart rate increases. I can feel beads of sweat forming on my bald head....who sweats on their head?????
I have to ask Denis to step in and fix this....I cant quite breath properly. thankfully Im already sitting down.
Denis finishes the job and I notice his hands are shaking.
Brittany pipes up that she has had four hours of training but never actually done a PICC dressing change. I want to hit her in nose with my fist but of course refrain.....
The tape measure comes out and I'm praying please please please please
20.2
DAMN IT....
It's over 20.


What Ive been worried about week after week, checking religiously the length of the line, calculating in my head the remaining centimetres before it gets past twenty. Worrying that it has moved, being extra careful in how far I move my arm, in the stretching to the top of the cupboard in the kitchen for the box of cereal, in picking up stuff.
The unthinkable has happened. Its gone over 20, even though I have been so careful. Now Ill have to have it xrayed and probably replaced. I squeeze my eyes shut and try not to think of the discomfort the first time around.
I sigh something akin to relief. Its done now and I dont have to worry about it anymore. I have no control over it.

Thanks Brittany, you're a real stress reliever......... :/