Christmas cheer

I blame Christmas. Thats why there hasn’t been a blog from me for ages. The chemo is still really tiring but when I’m feeling well, the best thing in the world is just enjoying doing ordinary stuff. I’ve even made my own Christmas pudding vodka!

Okay, it’s not just Christmas thats got in the way. I also had an emergency stay in hospital. A little while ago I suddenly became very ill in the middle of the night. It wasn’t long after a session of chemo. I had hours of severe pain and then I started vomiting. Sorry this is another blog post about being sick!

I couldn’t even get out of bed. Instead I was using the plastic bin in my bedroom. I’d actually bought it thinking that one day it may have an alternative use.

As I’ve had so much of this, I knew it was different this time. This was something much worse that the normal awful. Speaking to one of my consultants on the phone it was clear I would have to go into A and E. The moment when being ill turns into an unexpected hospital visit is scary. You get used to coping with being poorly but when you need proper medical help, it turns the situation into something much more stressful.

30 hours later and I was still vomiting. By this point the only thing coming out was bile. I was too ill to sit up in my uncomfortable hospital bed. Moving made things worse. Instead I was lying on my side, resting my head on a cardboard sick bowl, in place of a pillow. When I needed to throw up I just had to turn my face into the bowl. This is genius, I thought to myself, as I filled another bowl.

Genius??? It was only a few days afterwards when I’d stopped vomiting that I realised just how bad I must have been to think something like that. Drips and drugs helped me to improve. My parents brought in some of my post so I managed to make my stack of sick bowls look a little bit festive.

Almost a week later and I was out of hospital. No one was quite sure what exactly made me so ill but it wasn’t anything serious thankfully. As a veteran of getting bad news, I can’t tell you just how relived I was.

The problem was probably something to do with my stomach lining becoming inflamed. Apparently the correct medical term for my horrific sickness is that it was….”just one of those things.” Excellent.

Since getting out of hospital, I’ve had another dose of chemo and I’m fine. I managed to make the Christmas pudding vodka above. It wasn’t that which put me in hospital!

I have all the usual nonsense that goes with chemo of course. But that’s alright. That’s more than alright. I’m alive and feeling (relatively) well. I’m so looking forward to celebrating another Christmas with the people I love.

Chemo#5

Horse meat. That’s what has been getting me through. Well, horse meat and my knitting friend.

Okay, I’m not talking about the accidental eating of horse. I’ve already done that.

A few years ago I was tricked into having horse meat. I was on a story about a ski resort in Western Ukraine. At the end of filming we had a meal with the people who ran the place.

On the table there was a traditional spread. Vodka, pickles and slices of pure pork fat. Along with the more usual things including salads, bread and a selection of cold meat.

I was tempted by what I’d been told was a local delicacy. I popped a piece of red meat into my mouth. Ham, I thought or maybe cured beef. No, it was raw horse meat. It didn’t taste of much and was incredibly chewy. Then I was told what it was. Eugh! Everyone else found it hilarious.

So how exactly does the horse meat help?

This week has been tough emotionally. Not so much sobbing, but lots of stray tears. They seem to surface so often but I’ve learnt that I can kinda stop them by thinking about something totally different.

I’m finding that focusing on horse meat is working for me. I imagine it red, raw and ready to be disguised as beef. It’s my way of interrupting my cancery concerns. I don’t always want to deny the tears but there are times when I just don’t want to cry.

Like during a trip to see a musical a few days ago. It was a big family outing with mum, my aunts Judy, Rose and Juliet and my cousin Marie. It was a happy occasion. But let’s just say that when there was a sad song, I thought a lot about horse burgers.

As for my knitting friend, that was Sally. She came to keep me company for chemo#5. Not going on your own to hospital makes it so much less stressful. Sally is my oldest friend; we’ve known each other since we were about five. She’s a nurse but that doesn’t mean that hospital visits are any easier for her. We just hoped it wouldn’t be a traumatic day like one of her previous trips.

She saw me soon after my big cancer operation last year. I’d come close to death and was recovering in intensive care. As if that wasn’t bad enough, just before she arrived I had some kind of a scare. The doctors thought I might have had a stroke. I’d come round not knowing where I was and unable to use my left arm. Sally was only able to see me for a few minutes as I had to go off for a brain scan. I was seriously ill; it must have been shocking to see me like that.

This time thankfully it was all very different. I felt strong and alive as we walked into hospital together. We went along the corridor painted with dolphins which leads to the chemo cocktail bar.

The drugs sent me straight  to sleep in the pink reclining chair. It’s lovely to have someone by your side who doesn’t mind just sitting there for hours. I was totally out of it but I knew that I had a friend there if something went wrong.

Thanks to the PICC line, it was all so easy. I barely noticed as the toxic liquid slipped into my veins. The only big scary needles belonged to Sally. I was in such a deep slumber that once the treatment was over I had to sleep for another hour afterwards.

Chemo#5 was wonderfully uneventful. There was no drama and by the time I came round Sally had finished her knitting.

Chemo #1

I walked into the hospital with a sense of dread. This was my third round of chemo. I wasn’t worried but I just didn’t want to be there. I shouldn’t have to do this again.

There was a big queue to get checked-in. People were crowded around the reception. The hospital reeked of cinnamon, for me this is the sickening smell of chemo. I felt like I was going to collapse from the stress of it all. I wanted to shout, I’m going to faint if I have to stand any longer. Don’t you know I have cancer? But then so did everyone else so I kept quiet.

It was just a small wobble and I had my friend Tamsin with me for support. We drank cappuccinos and talked about happy things, anything other than cancer. Tamsin had brought me some lovely presents including a notebook to write my new List for Living.

The staff on the chemo ward were pretty much the same. Last time I was there I had my own hair. Despite wearing my Raquel wig for chemo#1 some of them still recognised me.

“Hey how you doing? You look well,” one of the nurses in a dark blue uniform said to me with a smile. I wanted to reply that I was only visiting, that I’d popped in to say hello.

“I’m back again for more.”

“Oh…..” Her smile disappeared.

Not much had changed at the chemo cocktail bar. The patient patrons were still mostly pensioners but at least there were some new high-tech reclining chairs.

Setting up the medical equipment, my nurse found it hard to get a vein. The chemo is delivered through an IV drip via an orange tube. My veins are rubbish and seem to run away at the sight of a needle. As my arm was gouged by the nurse, I looked away and towards Tamsin. She offered to pinch my other arm to take my mind off it. Now that’s what friends are for!

The chemo is so toxic that a collection of other things are pumped into you first to prepare your body. I was warned that one of them would make me sleepy. It actually made me feel drunk, properly end of the night and need to go home drunk. And I hadn’t even started on the evil chemo cocktail.

I pressed the recline button and settled back into my chair. I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.

It was time to visualise James Bond shooting the crap out of my tumour. It seems that I’m not the only one. A woman called Nicky sent me a message to say that when she had chemo she imagined Vera Duckworth from Coronation Street running around her veins killing the cancer with a rolling pin!

I slept almost all the way through the chemo. Now that’s my kind of a cancer kicking work-out.

I was woken by a loud man on the other side of the room who was visiting an older lady. I felt dizzy and disorientated as I came round. I watched the loud man talk to the nurses and other people’s visitors. He alternated between patronising and sleazy. What an idiot. If you’re visiting a cancer ward, then please shhhh, don’t shout. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of someone who’s under the influence.

As soon as the drugs were done, my friend and I made a swift exit.

Like before, I’m recovering at my parents’ house. Last night I slept in my childhood bedroom – the same place that I retreated to after all the previous cancer treatment. It’s very sad to be back in my old bed again because of chemo. But at the same time I have amazing parents who look after me. Not everyone gets that kind of support when they’re ill.

And very importantly I’m lucky to still be alive. I first had the disease when I was in my late twenties, since then I’ve been living under a cancery shadow. There are many times when really it should have killed me. Despite doing this all again I feel so very fortunate. I still have options.

Earlier I walked around the frosty garden a few times. When I’m recovering from treatment I always try to do some exercise. Compared to when I first did this after my massive operation last year, I now have masses more energy. I even jogged the final lap. Just because I could.

Most of the day has been far less energetic. It’s passed in a tired and dizzy haze. There’s a certain type of Ukrainian vodka that makes me feel like this and so I’m pretending to myself that this is just a hangover.

However this is a happy hangover. Getting a third cancer diagnosis was a huge shock but now I feel empowered. I’m back on the chemo cocktails and blasting that tiny tumour.