Day 9 & 10, Round 1, Chemotherapy
I did it.
I made it to the nadir day, and I am feeling fantastic.
Yesterday - day 9 - I awoke early, was pottering around, enjoying the time of day when it's still pitch black but there's a line of blush pink lighting up the horizon. Happy day I thought.. Relieved as I had a huge work day ahead of me.
Twenty minutes later, curled up with the saturday papers and a cup of coffee (decaf sadly) I literally felt like a switch was turned off within me. I went from feeling fantastic to feeling, perhaps I can just lie here and watch bad tv all day.
No chance of that.
It wasn't bad, but it was weird. I actually felt the switch from feeling one way to another take place within my body.
But my body didn't let me down, and I made the day, clocking up 20 hours from wake up to bed time, feeling a bit fatugued only during the first couple of hours of the day.
Another day of obsessive temperature taking. And relief when in the evening it climbed down from 37 to 36.5.
Not once since those fluids were pumped into me have I taken the state of my health, my being, for granted. I have felt so grateful to have escaped the long list of scary side effects I left the oncologist's office with. I have felt it has been a gift that my only break from work in nearly a year was able to be spent mostly as I had hoped, not bed ridden and sick. I have been so thankful I took the step to undergo chemotherapy and give myself the extra 2-3 per cent nudge against a recurrence when no one in my treatment team could come right out and recommned it because I fell into a "grey zone", and they left it up to me to decide if it would be worth going through. It was a decision that tore my husband and I apart as we wrestled back and forth with I should, I shouldn't, I should. The fear of what I would have to endure wrestling against the fear of recurrence and statistics, statistics and damn statistics.
I strarted this blog on this wonderful, wonderful forum because I had wished when I was trying to decide that I could read a day by day account of what it would be like.
Ultimately, as it is with the cancers we each have, our response to chemo will be highly individual, but I hope my experience -- which I know mirrors that of others too - might allay the fears some of you embarking on treatment may have. It may be really terrible...as others on this site describe..but it might not. You may experience very few side effects, or almost none. But by taking the brave step to undergo chemotherapy -- and it is a brave step for every single one of us - you are allowing one of the best things science can offer at the moment give you the best fighting chance to beat breast cancer into submission.
For now, I'm mentally preparing for the hair loss. I had reason to revisit photos for unrelated reasons today and kept being struck by what my hair can look on a good hair day. And how much there is of it! As I've said before, I've no doubt this will hit me harder emotionally than the mastectomy did (which didn't hit me at all because I just wanted it gone, and yesterday). I've never been vain about my hair. I don't blow dry it or style it. It spends half its life encrusted in sea salt from ocean swims, or in a pony tail on bad haiir days. But you know that cliche about you don't appreciate what you/ve got till it's gone? Before it's even fallen out I know I will be mourning even the bad hair days...not because I worry what my husband will think (our love is solid and we'll look like bobsy twins!), but because as open and public as I have been with my diagnosis and treatment within my friends and community, baldness, scarves, witty hats without the ensuing mop I usually sport, will be an instant announcement to anyone who sees me that I HAVE CANCER (though I actually try to think of myself as having had cancer - surgery took care of that, chemotherapy mopping up any strays, and in the not too distance future hormone therapy to keep the nasty cells at bay). And really, who wants to walk the planet advertising their personal affairs to strangers? Well unless you're Pariis Hilton or something. I don't want looks of pity, or fear, or curiosiity or OMG had no idea you had cancer when I run into acquaintances.
But welcome to my future. I'll deal. Perhaps in ways I didn't imagine possible. Bit like when I first got diagnosed.
Wishing everyone all the strength, calm and sense of humour to keep on fighting the good fight in the coming days.
x
