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.