woMEN- oh!-Pause...

Why is it not womenopause instead of menopause?

At 28, the menopause and its phraseology is not something that would normally bother me, yet here I am surfing the internet looking for ways and means to quell the constant flash of hot flushes.

I am in the middle of the menopause (well at the start really, but you get my drift).
Tamoxifen has hijacked me, kidnapped me into a scenario that is very bizarre. Already today I have searched a number of websites dedicated solely to this process that happens every woman, but a process that tends to happen at the time when twenty eight as an age is nearly doubled.

Hot Flushes.
Sleepless nights.
Moody moods.
Potential extra tummy rolls.
Osteoporosis.....

Another lists of side effects and things to concern myself with. If I kept all the list of side effects, hazzards and potential bloopers on a piece of paper and tacked them all together, one piece after another, I'd have enough paper to make a substantial roll (loo roll perhaps!).

Anyway hot flushes. They are not my friend. They come at the most inopportune times of course. Sitting in a cafe with my two friends, beaming an unsightly beetroot red, as if I had just ran a very hilly half marathon, the waitress casting unsure glances my direction. Or sitting in the waiting room at the doctors surgery, or worse, on the radiotherapy bed of torture,  as the nurses are politely chit chatting over my prone body. I spark a hot flush, big enough to ignite me and potentially the whole wing of the hospital. Silently I sweat, immovable as the machine buzzes around me and I pray that the lake of sweat gathering at the hollow of my collarbone will have magically disappeared by the time the nurse comes back. Of course it hasn't and she needs to pat me down before drawing on me with her permanent Sharpe marker. When I get up off the bed of torture the paper is stuck to my back in damp patches.

It's a good thing I don't have much modesty or self-conscious genes left after the last eight months of treatment. I shrug my shoulders and say, matter of factly 'Tamoxifen - Hot Flush.' The nurses nod their heads and cluck their sympathies.
I don't have time for sympathies, so I just get redressed and head out into the cool air of the morning. Smash bang into another pesky hot flush.

They happen if Ive drunk too much caffeine, if I eat anything too spicy, going from hot to cold, going from cold to hot, going from slightly warm to any other kind of temperature, going from slightly cold to any other kind of temperature, under any form of stress and of course when I attempt to sleep.

Sleep...OHHHHhhh elusive sleep.....habitually now, most nights around 2am I scorch a sweaty patch into the bed. One of the nurses the other day kindly pointed out, 'whatever will it be like in the summer time?'

Whatever indeed!

Radio T...So help me!

In comparison to hugging the puke bucket that was my constant companion during my chemotherapy, Radiotherapy is like breezy fluffy white clouds on a warm spring day, I would stretch to say that it is almost easy...Almost.
If daily trips to the hospital at 8.30 in the morning every morning, stripping off semi naked and clambering onto a bed that may double as a torture devise is your cup of tea, then you should definitely give it a go.
I'm half way there, thirteen sessions done and the end is actually near. The end of what?
I'm not really sure. Everyone keeps congratulating me that Im almost done but it doesnt feel like it. Yes the treatment will be over but there is the genetics stuff, the reconstruction stuff, the tamoxifen stuff, the check up stuff.  All the stuff.
Just cause the treatment is finished doesn't mean that the big C is gone away and everything is better. Cancer is my constant companion now. I think of things differently, I spend a lot of time on line reading articles, reading the back of food labels, deep breathing, mentally checking my stress levels.
Right now, I spend a lot of time looking down at my chest, whipping off my hand crochetted snood (thanks Mary) and dropping my chin to my chest, having a good aul look. Checking the pinkness of my skin, checking for any cracks, anything that heralds the beginnings of radio t burns, lathering on aqueous cream. So far so good.
The only thing that is red really is me. Holy moley...its hot. Take off beanie hat, take off snood, take off cardigan, deep breaths, sweaty, hot, hot, sweaty, count to twenty in my head, breath, remember to breath - HOT FLUSH.
Every day, every night, any hour, in the middle of doing anything these pesky hot flushes can arrive and totally throw you off. This morning, in radio t, on the machine, chatting to the nurse, half naked I felt this wosh of heat, start in my chest, rush up my neck and ping into my cheeks. Instant sweat, not a slow gradual kind of sweat you get when exercising, instant roasting hot, as if Ive just run ten kilometer race. Im strapped onto the table and cant move (unless I piss off the scarey nurse), so I have to lie there, chatting pleasantly to the nice nurse as she draws x's and o'x on me, wondering if she notices Im melting,  beads of sweat forming on my upper lip, beads of sweat forming on my chest and neck. I feel like a snowman on a tropical island, immobile and particularly useless.
Finally I am released and sheepishly sit up on the table, the paper towels sticking to my sweaty patches.

So today so far:

• Older ladies in the waiting room staring at my newly sprouting hair and bauld patches - check
• Semi-nakedness - check
• Awkward student nurse embarassed by my semi-nakedness and unsure where to look when she sees my scars - check
• Kranky nurse sternly telling me not to move - check
• Complete melting hot flush in middle of treatment - check
• A sweaty retreat from radio therapy suite - check

................. and all before 9.45 am.

Mental pitstop at the bakery for creamy sticky toffee bun and large full fat cappuchino with tripple espresso shots on the way home from hospital - nah. I think I'll have a fruit smoothie and a rice cake with agave instead.... :(

The Sooner I Start, The Sooner I Finish.

Happy Days.
I'm finished my chemo.

Feel like rubbishy rubbish for the week afterwards. The worst I've felt so far on Docetaxol.
My hands are red, the sides of them burning, my feet too and my nails feel like they are peeling off. I don't like picking things up, I don't like putting my hands in water, showering is an unpleasant experience. Worst of all, as I'm writing this post-chemo, I was wrapping Christmas presents with sick hands...unable to do the sticky tape, or hold the scissors properly. However, the week passes, as I knew it would.

I feel better now, the skin on my hands has peeled off, and I wonder if this is what it does to my outsides, what exactly can it be doing to my insides (Sigh). My hair has continued to fall out in little patches, specifically on the top while the rest of it grows back. I have browny-blonde (not grey, thank you very much boyfriend!) hair around all sides of my head and on top, a peppering of locks.... intermittent bald patches. It's grown about an inch and the bits on top stick straight up, giving the effect of total madness, the hair is branching out in all directions, attempting to touch ceiling and walls. I look like a crazy. But I don't care, because its hair baby! finally growing back.

I thought I would have a lovely break post chemo, four weeks in between end of chemo and the beginning of radiotherapy. The consultant informed me that there was a big of a Christmas backlog and that I would probably be seen in the middle of January. So I had every intention of sleeping and eating my way through the holidays, basking in the knowledge that I would not have to be making any trips to hospital any time soon.
The journey home for the hols was long and I stopped off mid way to see a friend and in the car just before I went to meet her I got a lovely phone call from the hospital. Radio therapy starts straight away, I get three days holidays over Christmas and then I'm back in. Every day for five weeks (weekends off). DAMN IT.
A part of me is annoyed not to have a break and another part of me is glad to be getting started. The sooner I start, the sooner I finish.

So, bright and early after Christmas I trundle down to the Cancer Centre and into a new experience, the first of many many new experiences associated with this disease.
I go to the reception and hand over my appointment sheet. Heads swivel, again I'm the youngest in the room by a good twenty years....oh, the joys of youth.

I go and take a seat, the round familiar buzzer in my hand. Not long after Im called to Lab 1, this is to be my lab for the remainder of my treatement, and these nurses and technicians are to be mine too for the next five weeks. I strip off and come over to the bed. Any semblance of decorum or modesty has long been anihilated. I find myself unawares talking about dresses to wear to weddings in the middle of winter with one of the nurses, completely starkers on top, waiting for the bed with strips to be adjusted.

I hop up and make sure my butt is the right side of the speed bump, its like a little rounded bump on the bed and depending on your positioning you have to have your bum on a certain side, next I lie back and make sure my head makes contact with the special head rest, finally I throw back my arms in a salute to abandon, as the nurse positions them in the arm stirrups. If feeling exposed, in more ways than one is the order of the day, then Hallelujah, I'm there.

I, for one moment, am thankful that my hair has not grown back fully, as this woudl be an embarrassing moment of hairy-armpit-itis. Also, I think for a minute how hard it would be if prone to excess body odour. Whilst undergoing radiotherapy, deodorant or strong creams on the torso is a no no. Finally, breast, scars, arm pits, upper arms, tummy, all exposed and spread eagle Im told, quite sternly, by head honcho nurse, NOT TO MOVE!

They mark me up, Sharpe marker at the ready, one green and one black, drawing lines and markers across my chest and under my arms, even ruling me with a freezing cold ruler.

With another stern, Do Not Move Under Any Circumstances, they leave the room telling me that they will be right back. The machine whirls and buzzed around me and I get this crazy urge to push myself off the bed, grab my clothes and do a runner. But I resist. Instead I get a mad itch in my nose and spend the next five minutes trying to concentrate on something else, afraid to move an inch.

Mount Everest....the end is nigh?

Last chemo session, I can't believe I've made it.

I practically skip into the cancer centre...practically, but not actually!
I think about the day ahead, the waiting, the tests, The Chair (with supposed flip back action, remote control television, special call button and attachable light...usually most if not all of these added extra features are broken!), the final session of Docetaxol and the PICC line.....
I anxiously ask the nurse if it is possible to get it removed today. I want it taken out but a little part of me has grown so attached to it, I worry that when they take it out it will just be my poor, skinny, misbehaving veins for the taking, the nurses eyeing them expectantly.... subtext - If i didn't have a fear of needles before, I now have a well established hate of them.
Anyway I'm nervous about getting my PICC out. I remember getting it in....and wow was that an unpleasant experience. I wonder if having it taken out will be as bad.

The consultant sees me. Well that's not exactly true. The consultant's skivvy....a junior doctor... sees me. It's a different one...a different one to all the previous ones who I've seen. Anyone ever get the distinct impression that they are on a conveyor belt? I only got a special appearance from the consultant for the first session of my chemo, the rest of the time I got to see the juniors...dont get me wrong they were all ok but from time to time I would have to remind them of facts from my file....like the fact that I had emergency surgery for an infected implant...when she asked me if my week had been eventful....i count that as pretty eventful. (post script...please read your patients files before administering medical advice...)

Anyway we go through the usual and then she writes me a note for my GP for a perscription for Tamoxifen, not Herceptin...woo hoo, little bit of good news and she sends me on my merry way.
I'm sitting there on the couch and am like...is that it?
Is this it?
Are we done?
Yup, she says, we will see you in three months, don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out...

Well, she didn't actually say that but as good as....I felt like I was wondering off into the sunset, in the middle of the Gobi desert, naked...and completely unsupervised...just imagine the sunburn you would have the following day.......

Anyway in the waiting room for The Chair I get chatting to this woman with lovely hair, well, a lovely wig that looks like hair, it really suited her. Half way through the conversation she announces that she is feeling very hot and akin to Samantha from Sex and the City, she, mid hot flush, whips off her wig. I smile at her audacity. She tells me all about her diagnosis and her 'cancer journey', as if this thing that we share does away with all social barriers and you suddenly find yourself telling really personal things to other people, mainly women, who have gone before or come after on the steps of the cancer ladder. This special club or group is at times overpowering and empowering. The whole 'journey' feels akin to climbing Mount Everest and when you get to the top, when you think you have done the worst bit, I have to  admit, the descent looks damn scarey too.

Anyway this vivacious lady, with no hair, her wig on her lap, which she strokes periodically, tells me about the time when she started chemo, when her hair fell out and when she went blind. (ya, you read right...when she went blind).

She had decided to do away with the remaining whisps of her hair, denial had sustained her most of the way but when she confronted herself in the mirror there really was no hiding from the fact that her hair was going, going, gone.  So she took matters in to her own hands and shaved the remainder of it off. A few days later, post second chemo treatment, she slipped her hat on to her head at night time and turned off the light for her sleep. The next morning, she woke and in a blaze of panic realised that the second chemo treatment had caused her to go blind. Her heart was in her mouth and loosing the plot, post sleep, she began to shout for her husband,
'I've gone blind, I've gone blind',  she sobbed uncontrollably.

He, in his wisdom, reached across and pulled the hat, which had fallen down over her eyes in the middle of the night, back up to her forehead. Blinking, she looked around her, as if seeing for the first time. Her heart rate slowed down and she smiled sheepishly at her husband.

When she told me that story I couldn't help but laugh and we both had a good giggle before ....The Chair. Maybe that is what its all about, going to a place where youre momentarily blinded, sidetracked but then a little ray of light gets you back on track.

I see the light alright, when the drugs hit my system I felt the haze of sleepiness and impatience to be gone from this place of unwellness. I fall asleep, thankfully, as it got me through the excrutiatingly slow hour where they pump the toxins in.

As a prize for my overall good behaviour at the end, the nurse tells me that I can have my PICC line out. A mixture of excitement and dread washes over me. I get my stuff together and stand up to leave, I wonder if I can remember the way back to the PICC service offices and fear that I would have to ask one of the nurses. I begin to get anxious, imagining the impending discomfort.
The nurse tells me that they do the line for me, there and then. I go back to my seat and sit down and look around me, there are at least ten other people in the room having treatment and Im worried that I will say a bad word when she comes to take it out, what if i start to cry, or bleed all over the place. I feel totally exposed. The nurse approaches, gloves at the ready, I steel myself for the pain.

WHOOOOOosssssssshhhhhh. Five seconds and it's out, no blood splatter, not that much discomfort, just a very strange sensation and it's all over. Bye bye PICC my friend. Thanks for all your help.

Bye bye cancer treatement centre, session six over and done with. Bye bye consultant and treatement nurses. Bye bye free tea and coffee and chocolate biscuit stand. Bye bye kranky receptionist.

If i had the energy I would skip from the place but right now I just want to get home and get to bed and get through the next seven days of discomfort and then, maybe then I will feel like the journey is half over.

Mount Everest, I have you climbed.....partially.