My Cancer Experience Part 2

I have been looking back at all my writings, diary & journal posts during my cancer experience & have realised that I pretty much stopped writing my journal as I began chemo & radiotherapy (I think my last journal entry was on the first day of treatment.) I think that was because treatment was so hard & I felt so awful that it took all my energy & resolve just to get through each day & left no energy or inclination to write.

Having cancer & going through treatment is one of the scariest things I have ever done. I wasn’t scared of being ill or going through the actually treatment, but very frightened of it not working, the collateral damage effecting me for the rest of my life & more frightened than I can ever tell you of not being there for my lovely family in the future (& that fear is VERY much still with me). I am still very much in the middle of this as I will not find out whether the treatment has been successful until a couple of months down the line, I also won’t fully know what collateral damage I have been left with until 6 months or a year down the line when things really start to settle down. However, having got this far & now that I am beginning to feel stronger & better I feel that I am able to write again!

The first morning I walked onto that chemo ward it felt wrong – I felt I shouldn’t be there. I didn’t feel ill, I was sure there must have been a mistake, I still expected someone to tell me they had made a mistake & I could go home!! I was so nervous not knowing what the day would involve. Fortunately the staff on in the chemo suite were lovely & so friendly. They put an IV line into my hand & I began with 2 hours of fluids – this is because the chemo drug is toxic & harmful to your kidneys, so by keeping you as hydrated as possible will help try to minimise the damage. After 2 hours they came to replace the bag containing the fluids with the dreaded ‘pink’ bag containing the chemo drug. I actually braced myself as they swapped the bags, thinking something would happen as it started to enter my system, but after a while I realised it felt no different & I went back to watching my iPad & reading my kindle! (It still makes me feel sick just writing this & thinking about the chemo) after an hour of the chemo drug it was back to another hour of fluids before I was finally released to go downstairs for my first radiotherapy session. It was a long day & I felt drained at the end of it, but I remember feeling so relieved that I had made it through the first day, I felt like I had taken the first huge step & now all I had to do was get through the rest!

The first week wasn’t too bad & I began to think that I would get through it okay. But obviously the side effects build up over time. During the weeks that followed I went through constipation, diarrhoea, incredible stomach pains & bloating, not being able to sleep (too wired from steroids) , tiredness, nausea, radiation burns, pains in my chest, pains in my hips, aching, indigestion, bad taste in my mouth (still struggling with that one BTW) feeling miserable, crying (actually no, sobbing uncontrollably) for no reason (well not for no reason, but just suddenly out of the blue, like when I was driving to the hospital for radiotherapy or in the middle of the night (too much time to think!!) There were times when I felt like I couldn’t carry on with treatment, I just wanted it all to stop - I especially hated Mondays (chemo day) as that was the long, horrible day, but on I would go, taking each day at a time & getting though as best as I could. The meds (anti-sickness & steroids) that they gave me Monday to Thursday would get me though the first half of the week, but then by the weekend when I was no longer on the meds I would find myself crawling to the bathroom with horrific stomach pains & bowel spasms. I had a large chart on the wall to tick off the days & it was a great relief each time we could tick off another day. I managed to keep doing the school run (apart from Mondays, as that was such a long day at the hospital) & driving myself to & from treatment so I felt like I was in charge of the cancer not it controlling me! I think it helped the kids too that I was able to keep things as normal as possible for most of the week. My whole days took on a pattern, drop the kids off, bit of food shopping, drive to Leicester for radiotherapy, drive home, grab half an hour’s sleep, then back to school to pick up the kids & then the next day the same & the one after that….!! At the time the weeks seemed endless & I would long for the weekend to have two days off treatment, only to find they were actually the worst days of the week to cope with!! But now that it is all over & I look back it seems to have gone quite quickly. The next part in the ‘waiting to see if it’s worked’ part. I try not to worry & concentrate on getting over the treatment & getting my strength back up, but there are times (especially at night – too much time to think) when I start thinking all the ‘what ifs’, What if it hasn’t worked? What if it comes back? What if they haven’t done enough to get rid of it? What if….? What if…… The kids are a very good distraction & keep me going & give me absolutely no time to think about anything else other than them!!!