Here I am. Waving weakly to you all after a rough couple of days. In fact I have been hit by a massive chemo curveball these last two sessions.
After last week’s treatment I took my ailing body to bed and didn’t manage to get up until Thursday. And the same thing happened this week after Tuesday’s session. Basically, I have been hit by the Chemo bus, which is like being run over, then reversed on for good measure.
There’s no rhyme or reason to chemo treatments I find. Some days I bounce around like Zebedee (albeit a slightly rusty one) and others I am Dylan. Except I don’t even bother playing the guitar I’m just ready for bed.
However the last two Wednesdays have been wiped from existence completely in a foggy haze of exhaustion, sickness, aches and pains. It’s such a frustrating and annoying experience. Mostly because the mind is willing but the body is oh so weak. It’s like a warped version of the song (with no eating or raving) Wake. Drink. Sleep. Repeat.
And I hate being ill. I remember having just one and a half days off during five years of high school when I came down with flu – would have been two full days but I made the rookie mistake of getting up midday in search of food, and my mum said: “well if you’re feeling better you can catch the afternoon classes.”
You had to be dying in our house to get out of school.
Of course we are plagued on my mother’s side with the infamous fainting family party trick (which I have talked about to some of you before) where if one goes down, the other looks and then goes down. Bit like fainting goats.
Watching my grandad and uncle repeatedly pass out at the sight of each other fainting was one of the highlights of a family gathering at the Woodside pub circa 1985. It took a while for some genius to realise they needed separating to stop the ridiculous replay of two men stuck in a swooning loop in the pub doorway.
I thought I had escaped this genetic quirk of nature but it happened to me when hubby fainted after being stung by a scorpion some years ago. I managed to batter the beast (scorpion, not hubby) but then passed out looking at his inert body on the kitchen floor. A career in nursing was never going to be on the cards for me. And I take care not to look at any patients in the hospital looking dizzy or lightheaded.
Of course in your sleep-induced sub-conscious mind you start to wonder if it’s just the chemo knocking you out of kilter or, as your mind takes you on a medical mystery tour, it can range from a self-diagnosis of flu right up to leukemia.
Although this is probably down to an amazing true story I have just finished – Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad – about a 22-year-old struck down by acute myeloid leukemia who then went on to spend four years in treatment. FOUR years!!! And much of this in confinement in hospitals.
During her treatment she wrote a column for the New York Times entitled ‘Life, Interrupted” where she says: “Cancer doesn’t just put your life on hold. It’s not like you get to skip back a few months and pick up exactly where you left off. I wasn’t going to get my old life back.”
Once she was given the all-clear she set off on a 100-day road trip around the US to meet some of the people who had contacted her via her column with connected circumstances, to help her rediscover basically how to live again.
Yeah don’t panic folks I won’t be turning up on your doorsteps!
I applaud this young lady. It’s a fascinating and heartbreaking read of what I can only say is pure endurance in terms of her recovery process.
Part of her book epilogue reads: “Life is not a controlled experiment. You can’t time-stamp when one thing turns into another, can’t quantify who impacts you in what way, can’t isolate which combination of factors alchemise into healing. There is no atlas charting that lonely, moonless stretch of highway between where you start and who you become.”
I try to picture Suleika giving me a virtual slap in the face when I’m feeling sorry for myself being laid up in bed because it’s not a percentage of what she went through.
So Thursday is the beginning of a slow rebuild to recovery to feel almost normal again by the weekend. I have a consultancy appointment next week so shall be having words with Dr. Kildare about this new development in terms of side effects that have manifested themselves. Because we don’t like them. At all.
Chemo Tuesday was much the same. It was a Yes to the bed. And Oh Yes to a nap. I was never that good at napping pre-cancer. Now napping has become something I am really good at!
Get cancer. Learn a new life skill!
two steps freelance 