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.