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.

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......... :/

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.