Take 2 - Second Chemo Cycle

Dear Non-Toxic (but freezing) Noggins,

I would just like to throw it out there into the universe that I am a tad pissed off people!

It seems to me to be extremely unfair or unreasonable that not only does one have to lose their hair completely, but one has to do so at the beginning of the coldest week EVER in Melbourne in years!!!!!!!

You will have to trust me on this one folks, but I can honestly say that sans hair I believe you are about 5 degrees colder than someone blessed with their natural hirsuteness.

Last week I attended my second chemo on the Thursday and it went well. Siobhan had shaved off the prickles left from my hair clippering and I was all bald and shiny headed.

I had attended the Medical Oncologist's the day before, and all was well with the progress. The chemo was over and done in a few hours and I headed home to a reasonably comfortable night. By Sunday however, the treatment had taken hold. Sunday was a long long day of intermittent sleep rudely interrupted with violent chills running through my body followed by soaring temperatures and hot sweats. It was incredibly exhausting.

It is very difficult to describe how awful it is. And in the comfort of post treatment hind sight you look back at your own inability to not push through and you think to yourself , "geez, get a grip", But as someone who is pretty tough, the one thing I can say I have learnt from having chemo is, that I will be far more empathetic to other people's experiences than I have ever been before.  The loss of your own well being for a known and prescribed period of time, where you just have to ride it out, is simply awful. The nights, I found, are the worst.  Everyone is different and apparently experiences different symptoms, duration and severity so one can't generalise, but now with my second treatment, having had the same regime as the first time, my medical oncologist indicated that I can expect the same thing for the three cycles. The second lot of three chemo cycles using a different regime, due the treatment after next, may pose a new set of impacts.  

For the first day or two nothing untoward takes effect. However after that, the two days following, the lethargy and fatigue is almost overwhelming. Lifting your arm to hold a cup of tea (that someone else  has kindly made for you) takes incredible strength to even get around the idea that you have a cup of tea that ideally you should drink!! You stare at a book or at the television hoping for some pleasant distraction but it hazes in front of you. To hold concentration requires an effort that you are simply incapable  of making. You are just inside your own head the entire time with random thoughts murking through your brain. If you are lucky, you will fall into a sleep  - which hopefully kills a few more hours towards that time when you will be feeling better. Often though the dreams are unsettling and bizarre in content and meaning and a cause for some anxiety. As the chemo works its magic, your symptoms take centre stage on the third and fourth days.

Throughout the day and every hour or half hour throughout the night, your body is trembling with chills and you feel just so wretched. If you are asleep, your soaring temperature awakes you with the last vestiges of cold shudders running through your body before the heat gets turned up to high. Despite your age, despite your circumstances, you revert to that little child inside and you simply want your Mum so she can make it all better. Suddenly, your body stops trembling and your body temperature soars.

You are burning up and your clothes stick to your body. You claw at the previously soft and toasty warm hand knitted beanie that so recently cocooned your bald head. Now it feels harsh and scratchy on your sensitive pasty skull. You rip it off your head to get relief. You throw the blankets and the jumpers off. You are sweating like a pig. You stink !! The chemicals oozing from your pores make you smell manky and horrid. Like some industrial spill, the odour is both toxic and 'commercial' - not human at all. You are damp and clammy in every body crease. And you just want to make it stop. And then the exhaustion sets in. Without leaving the prostrate lying position, you have run the equivalent of a half marathon and if you are lucky, you will sleep.

This pattern repeats for a few days and at night it is more frequent. In the stillness of night with no distractions, the impact seems so much more violent and so much more traumatic. The morning dawns and you are exhausted and spent. But at least you are one day (and night ) closer to the end. This week has been tough.

Just when you think you can't bare it any more, the symptoms shift and life becomes a little easier. The trembling and temperature swings cease and a constant low level nausea has now set in. But never fear queasy readers, I have two nauseau reducing strategies up my sleeve to combat the worst. Firstly, at my disposal is the miracle strength capabilities (in my mind, at least) of these amazing Ginger tea bags provided by the lovely Ron. Ron, Siobhan, I and our dodgy plumbing ........salute you!!! Second, is my anti-nausea kit provided by the ever thoughful Michelle, whose essential supplies of fruit tingles, peppermint lip balm and a totally herbal, nausea-preventing wrist band  leaves me strong and superwoman like in the face of cryptonite strength nausea.

So with some nauseau and the ongoing feeling that my gums have been scoured with a Brillo pad, I march onwards and hopefully upwards. My gums have become all soft and gooey and cannot abide salty or any tough food that needs some mastication. But compared to yesterday and the days before peoples, life is better...........so much better.

So all things being equal, I will now be on the improve and can start getting out and about. I can now start to enjoy the hair and hat options that I have before me and  give the neighbourhood (and blog readers) a very good laugh.


Take it easy and keep your hair about you!!!

Kelly xxxx

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