Greetings from Cancer Central.
First up is a change in schedule as weekly blog will now be reduced to every three weeks to coincide with new treatment schedule and not bore the pants off you all with my moaning and groaning.
When I was five, the kids in our entire street all got the chickenpox. It spread like a dose of Covid. Except me. I waited until we went on our family summer holiday to Torquay where I then spent days in a darkened caravan scratching and listening to everyone have fun outside in the pool. I feel like that now some days, cooped up in a darkened cool room waiting to be released to join the summer fun.
I was back at the hospital on Tuesday, which began with the usual blood tests which are good, bar a little anaemia, and then a four hour wait in between to see the consultant. With hubby in tow this time we headed to the nearby shopping centre to kill some time.
Dr Kildare wasn’t in today. Boooo. But his stand-in whose name I forget, was equally as young and lovely and gave me a thorough examination and was very positive about the reduced tumours. She reckons in some cases the chemo is so effective it kills off the cancer cells completely so post-operation the prognosis for any recurrence is pretty much eliminated. Yayyyyy.
Breast cancers are tested for the presence of hormone receptors Oestrogen (ER+) and Progesterone (PR+) and also the protein Human Epithelial Growth Factor 2 (HER2). Around 80 per cent of breast cancers are Oestrogen receptor positive. These can be treated with targeted therapies to slow the growth of the tumours. Cancers without these receptors are known as Triple Negative breast cancer (that’ll be me) which is more aggressive and more difficult to treat.
According to Breast Cancer UK: “There is no simple cause of breast cancer. A variety of risk factors come together to make you more, or less, susceptible. Some of these risk factors are inherited, some are incurred throughout your life and others are present in the environment in which you live.”
It is said a woman born after 1960 and living in the UK has an estimated one in seven lifetime risk of developing breast cancer.
I wonder now how I was so presumptuous thinking this is something that would never happen to me with such intimidating statistics.
Anyway, with the weekly sessions now in the can, it’s time for the Big Bloody 4 as I am calling them – to be administered every three weeks with four in total. This is a different type of chemo to the weekly Taxol treatment and is called Adriamycin or Doxurubicin and has the formidable nickname of the Red Devil because of its distinctive red colour which also makes your wee turn red during the first day or two. Which I can vouch for.
On the plus side it kills cancer cells by damaging their genes and interfering with their reproduction.
It’s a beast by all accounts and the doctor warned it comes with sickness/nausea/diarrhea side effects mostly. I could also lose my finger and toenails and my hair will fall out – although that ship has already sailed.
With my anxiety levels at an all-time high with the onset of something new, I pushed the first chemo session until Wednesday mainly because after six hours or so out I’d had enough of hanging around and decided another three hours of new chemo was best on a fresh day.
The consultant has given me various pills I can take to counteract the side effects once the shit hits the fan (hopefully not literally) and although day one after the dreaded Red Devil was pretty evil and left me feeling like crap, today I am up and about and slowly eating again. This is a win-win as I have already lost five kilos in weight and after a quick weigh-in on the big scales in the fruteria I am currently at 51kg so can ill afford to lose too much more without looking like Twiggy on a crash diet.
I was also scheduled to give blood during the chemo session as I’d volunteered to donate to the hospital’s own research into Triple Negative cancer. After giving blood before treatment began, my mid-treatment test was due although there were some problems in trying to draw blood from my hand IV so she then punctured another hole in my arm which caused a literal blood bath and filled three vials.
“Leave me some blood I might be needing it.”I joked.
Lady in the chair nearby piped up: “Ahhhh just have a bocadillo de jamon and you’ll be fine!” Bit like Lucozade, a wad of paper towels and an episode of Bod, fixed all ailments when we were kids, it seems in Spain a ham sarnie will cure most things in life, including blood loss and anaemia.
two steps freelance 