Constant chemo

It’s now 5 down and 13 to go. Or in chemo talk, I’m now into cycle 2. (Each cycle lasts 3 weeks.)

Thankfully the sickness has got much easier to deal with than when I last updated my blog. The vomiting has stopped – yay! I now take more tablets, some pre-emptively and it seems to work.

The exhaustion is still pretty bad. At times it’s bearable but it can be unpredictable and overwhelming. Occasionally when I’m doing everyday stuff I feel like I’m going to faint. This tiredness is so frustrating but I’ll take it over the sickness any day.

When you don’t know how shattered you’re going to be it’s hard to plan what you can do. There are the things that you’ve organised up to do ages ago, before the treatment started. You want to be able to carry on as normal but your body often has other ideas. I try to do what I can. I don’t want to miss out on life. I want to enjoy as much as I can and the chemo won’t stop that.

Mostly though my world has shrunk and I spend a lot of time on the sofa. As I’ve done during previous chemos I try to get up around breakfast time. I feels good to be dressed and have make-up on these days. Mentally I feel like this is very important. It’s much better to be out of bed during the day and I know this will also help my recovery.

One of the other nasty side effects is that I’m now getting a really bad taste in my mouth. It’s worst around the days when I’ve just had chemo. Fizzy sweets seem to help as does chewing gum and drinking tea. It’s hard to describe but it’s kind of metallic which makes sense as some of the drugs are based on platinum.

The steroids have again affected what I want to eat. They demand I eat crisps every single day. I crave fatty tastes and crunchy food. The steroids make me so very hungry. I wake up ravenous in the middle of the night. It’s like a painful ache and it’s like I haven’t eaten for days when it’s only been a few hours. However as I’m too tired to get up I just put up with the pain.

I’m getting more used to carrying around my chemo bottle. I hardly notice the bumbag. Now the sickness is under control I don’t look at it and feel nauseous. But it’s awkward and the thought that this is a continuous chemo cocktail which basically lasts for 5 months is quite freaky.

This course of chemo is hard but the main thing is that I now know I can cope with it.

Chemo no 61

It’s been such a horrible shock remembering just how bad chemo can be. I suppose it’s been so long since the last lot that I’d conveniently forgotten. Otherwise I might not have agreed to have more.

I’ve just been so tired and dizzy from the anti-cancer drugs. It’s been like a never ending hangover. And this is just the start. There are many, many weeks to go.

For this treatment I have a chemo cocktail once a week and then I have a bottle of the stuff to go home with. The container is attached to me. I never thought this part would be so very hard.

The bottle has a clever mechanism pumps the drug into my body continuously. It’s the size of a small bottle of water and it has to come with me everywhere and I mean everywhere. I was given a bag at hospital (below) to carry the bottle around my waist but it’s not brilliant and quite uncomfortable.

My friend Lynne suggested that I ditch this for a 80s bum bag and thats what I’ve gone with! Well almost, the one I using doesn’t look too retro. It’s actually a running belt and seems to work much better.

Now that I’m feeling incredibly exhausted most of the time, having to carry around this bottle of toxic liquid makes things even worse. It’s so frustrating. It’s also a constant reminder that I’m on chemo. That’s something which I really want to forget.