Your days will be up and down, you'll feel like you're on a roller coaster, they said. Well, today was a down day. Woke up feeling knackered, looking haggard, with spinning head and wobbly legs. The kind of day you can't form words, a day you know you're going to have to write off. Tried a slice of toast, but it felt like eating an old flannel. Thank goodness for EnSure, milkshakey things from the doctor, sipped through a straw. Meal replacements, chew-free nourishment, easy to tolerate, quite tasty too.
Still, I feel as if a Sumo wrestler is clamped to my shoulders, so I'll say night-night.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Monday, May 7, 2007
Aunt Alopecia pays a visit
Hair loss, one might imagine, is the least of my problems, but it knocks the confidence. Where once I'd moussed, gelled and spat on the wispy bits, now the hair coats my pillows and floats in the air like, er, floaty hair. They say it will grow back when the chemo finishes. We'll see, but in the meantime I've ordered several bandanas to see me through the thin times, and some wacky wool to knit myself a No-hair-day-chemo-soropti-cap . If they fail, it's looking like a buzz-cut.Pic on right is me with hair. Can't quite bring myself to snap the new baldy me at the mo.
A sharp tug on the mortal coil
Into every life a little merde must fly. My wee parcel jetted in on 7 January 2007 when I was diagnosed with cancer. Actually, I think I took the news rather well, but through naivete rather than stoicism. It was hard to digest in one sitting: Cancer, bowel cancer, metastasised to liver, also hurtling unimpeded through lymph nodes. Inoperable. Incurable. Not a gift-wrapped parcel, then.
During the following months I've embarked on the chemotherapy journey, experiencing most of the side effects: diarrhoea, mouth ulcers, nausea, oral thrush, hair loss, and debilitating fatigue. When the exhaustion wave washes over you, it's best to surrender and take a nap. I've been in a hospice and three different hospitals where I've been treated, amongst other things, for neutropenia (an infection coupled with low white blood cell count - quite dangerous, I'm told), and fed antibiotics which gave me an allergic reaction and anaphylactic shock (can be fatal in minutes if left untreated). Scary stuff.
During the following months I've embarked on the chemotherapy journey, experiencing most of the side effects: diarrhoea, mouth ulcers, nausea, oral thrush, hair loss, and debilitating fatigue. When the exhaustion wave washes over you, it's best to surrender and take a nap. I've been in a hospice and three different hospitals where I've been treated, amongst other things, for neutropenia (an infection coupled with low white blood cell count - quite dangerous, I'm told), and fed antibiotics which gave me an allergic reaction and anaphylactic shock (can be fatal in minutes if left untreated). Scary stuff.
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