Chemo no 60

I found it hard to believe that this was my 60th chemo cocktail. As you can imagine I was dreading it. I was well aware of how horrific the next few days and months will be.

I had a bit of a wobble the night before but I actually felt great as I sat in the hospital chair waiting for my toxic fix.

I realised that doing something you’ve done so many times before has it advantages. You know what to expect and how to prepare. And most importantly I had Luke to hold my hand.

It was such a long day at hospital. Endless hours of being attached to a drip. For anyone interested I’m having two chemotherapy drugs – Cisplatin and 5FU. Plus the usual fluids, magnesium, and steroids.

Oh yes the steroids. I’d forgotten how wonderful they are. After a few of hours I was on a steroid high. It felt almost like a drunken daze. It certainly makes the chemo cocktail easier to take. So what else is a drunken girl going to do? Take selfies in the toilet of course!

That drunken daze stayed for the rest of the session. Maybe it was the drugs but I felt happy to be having treatment. While I dislike chemo. I hate even more the sense that my cancer is growing again. I want to be in control. As my friend Kevin put it, I’m now building up my chemo-cation airmiles.

When the drips were done, the chemo hadn’t finished. I had to take home a bottle of the 5FU drug. It’s attached to me via tube into the port thats in my chest. I’m now on a constant portable drip. It means this drug will be going into me 24/7. The bottle is attached to a belt around my wait. You could say that its my new hip flask.

I’ve no idea how I’m going to feel. I had the first drug many years before and it was fine. But I’ve never had the second drug or been on a continuous drip. I’ve been told to expect to be exhausted. A couple of days on I feel quite rough. I woke up on the first morning after with what felt like a hangover. I suppose that was only to be expected.

Since my last blog post I’ve had lots of lovely comments. Thanks ever so much. They mean so much to me and help to keep me going.

Thats the first one done, I’m so glad to get that under my belt without any big drama. Just 17 to go.

End of the chemo-cation

Here we go again. My lovely long chemo holiday is over. It’s been an incredible 14 months without any nasty drugs. It’s been one of my best years ever. While the cancer stayed dormant I got my life back and it was extraordinary. Often it was as if I didn’t even have the disease.

After each treatment you always hope that it will go away forever. Even when you know that it’s very unlikely to happen. The longer you go without needing chemo, the more you hope for the impossible. You dare to dream that you could be the exception.

But a couple of months ago the pain and the blood tests started to tell me a different story. That the cancer was growing inside me again.

It’s such a harsh blow. I know this is was expected and I realise that I had a much bigger chemo holiday than predicted but it doesn’t make it any earlier to accept.

However the good news is that because I’ve had so long without any chemo cocktails my body is in much better shape than it has been for a while. In the past I’ve gone from one load to toxic drugs to another without much chance to recover. While I still feel exhausted much of the time, my body should be able to cope well with whats to come.

This week I start treatment and in total it will be my 60th chemo! Over the next 5 months I will get 18 blasts of the stuff. I dread the side effects but I need the cancer killing drugs to live longer and to hopefully have many more lovely chemo-cations.

No 27 on the List for Living!

27) Fly a kite

I really loved doing this as a child and wanted to experience it again as an adult. When I was younger the kites we flew were often made of bin liners!

However this time I had something much more special. There was no homemade contraption as my fiancée Luke has a stunt kite.

We set off on a beautiful wintery day, cold and clear, but we were not sure if it was blowy enough. We drove to spot thats popular with kite flyers.

But by the time we reached the higher ground, it was clear that there was more than enough wind.

 

I held onto the strings and when Luke threw the kite into the air, it easily caught the breeze and soared into the sky. It felt almost supernatural, like the kite was alive.

I didn’t realise it would be quite so breath taking. It was incredible. What a wonderful thing to do from my List for Living.