First day of radio and first week of new chemo brings all the firsts-nervousness again so hoping this post can help all the me’s out there about to face the same day….you know you will be fine but it’s all in the not knowing. We know to take each step as it comes but today it seems there’s more steps to take. Here goes:
I got a dummy run of the radiotherapy on the friday before. The rotation of that big linear accelerator machine, the lasers to line you up and then some noises and it’s all over, next time it’ll be firing out some photons. Just some radiation. Normal right?!
So Monday – pre-assessment bloods & chat with doctor. I am instructed to not get out of bed until 11am since radio is at 430 everyday and literally just chill, rest & relax for the next 6 weeks (…I’ve already lined up a spectacular video list of Woody Allen movies and comedy by Jim Gaffigan and Louis CK). This new set of treatment is heavier and as there is two sets of things going on, chemo & radio, my body will need the rest. I am also told that I will need exercise to boost a little energy – we are talking 20-30 min walking.
Also got some books lined up and even an Origami How To book too. I also walk my neighbours’ dog. My neighbour got a dog, her first ever dog!, in her 70s for some company. It was the most hyper little thing when we first started walking him and has since calmed to her liking. That dog has been more of a lifeline to me than I to him. He had escaped one day and bounding into my garden trying to jump on my head and well, that was that. I take him to the nearby park and there are public hydraulic exercise machines – plenty resistance for my much lower energy levels. Ok, so here goes, the review of chemo days….
First day of Cisplatin
Cannulated after 5 attempts. Boo hoo, cries I. The process isn’t emotional it’s just the frustration of not being able to get it in. My new Maybelline mascara stays intact, I’m impressed. It’s in and it’s 2 hours saline, 2 hours Cisplatin and another 2 hours saline. The Cisplatin is damaging to your kidneys so also drinking water also helps. I also get my radiotherapy too so I walk down with my ‘dancing partner’ as some call it, and while I’m on the radiation tray bed I’m still hooked into saline. Its much quicker after the initial radiation, so 15 mins I’m back to my private room in the ward.
Towards the end of the saline, nausea and tiredness set in. Wow. I can barely keep my head from the pillow whilst also being aware the floor might be covered in vomit in any second. Nothing comes up and its time to leave. My face is swollen as is my hand. My mum comes to drive home and it’s chocka with rush hour traffic and Im sitting in the passengers seat with a sick bag just incase. I crawl into bed and try to sleep it all off. God I feel like crap.
The following day I am just pretty weak and tired – DUVET DAY! Up to hospital for radio then back again to bed. The rest of the week I’m just pacing myself, walking the dog. Of anything to note, the shakes I got was weird. My hands mainly and then one day I just felt all jittery. I didn’t call it in or anything, just stayed in bed that day and later on my next doctors pre-assessment, found out that it may be the anti-sickness drugs were too high so that’s been reduced for this second week.
Cisplatin No. 2
OK so the dread of the cannulation is there so the Doctor prescribes a relaxing pill to help my nerves if that’s what was getting in the way of being cannulated. It wasn’t and another 5 attempts until it was in place for my chemo that day. And still the emotions coming. The reflexologist from Macmillan pays me a welcome visit that day. Ah just nice to have a chat with a new face and smelling all those lavender and citrus orange oils.
The previous weeks’ nausea appeared again at the same time only the nurses were keen to give me something and told me to sleep on and stay overnight if I wished. That meant needle to the stomach and as when I woke up from its sleeping effect my nausea was gone. Wow, what a difference. Slept until 6am next day when I got home and relatively awake that day.
The doctor had also given me anti-sickness pills to help me sleep at nights (between sweating and needing to pee I average 2 hour sleep increments). However the pills, only meant to last up to 12hrs, gives me a hangover effect the entire next day and I’m dead emotionally so I try it two nights in a row then give them up.
Trip to Dublin this weekend and having only two things planned: adult only leprechaun tour and visit to Butlers chocolates cafe. I wouldn’t class it as fatigue but lack of energy which will catapult you feeling like an elderly person who requires lots of sitting and short increments of ‘go’ sometimes even talking cant make can take my breath away.
Here’s how it goes; Walk to the park across the road of the hotel. Sit down. Look at Oscar Wilde and his quotes. Walk to St Stephens Green for breakfast. Sit down. Walk into St Stephens Green. Sit down (for ages!). Walk along Grafton Street. Sit down (Butlers chocolate cafe!). Walk back to hotel. Fall asleep. It’s 3pm. That’s me for the night. Order food to hotel room.
Cisplatin No. 3
Ok this will make me just over half way on this treatment and 3/4 done of treatment overall…..looking forward to tomorrow, not so much for today. I have had an enormous craving all week for meat, red red meat! I find out in my bloods I have a much stronger level of haemoglobin levels (red blood cells) which was a fantastic thing. Well done cravings!
Ok but the cannulation thing again. Relax pill swallowed but I don’t really feel it’s affect. It’s only 5mg. Anyways, 6 attempts with the cannula then someone else to called…they put it straight into the ‘risky’ vein. Its the vein inner elbow – medical term insert here!! – risky because if the chemo leaks it could damage some nerves close by as opposed to muscle tissue if its in my forearm. But promise I do to keep it straight, the chemo goes forth. They are ready with anti-sickness drugs and due to the bank holiday, the entire day starts at 9am and finishes at 1am. I sleep next day til 10am and it’s duvet day as normal but the rest of the week I am alert and energetic…then I catch a cough.
Cisplatin No. 4
The cough raised a red flag for the doctor who insisted calls off chemo. I am given antibiotics and sent home.
I come back three days later and still got a cough so Chemo No. 4 didn’t happen. They don’t delay the chemo any further, they just skip it. So only one more chemo to go…on Monday. The week of the Brachytherapy. So fingers crossed (even though I hate chemo days but I know I need them) I have different antibiotics and am given three white blood cell injections for over the weekend – totally don’t have the head space to give them to myself so district nurse is in place! Am so fed up with needles I even start to shake when I get one, even if I don’t feel it! But here’s the thing – if I’m not ok by Monday, and I’ve got the internal radiation to do on Thursday, then I skip that as well. They don’t like to do these two things so close together. Which would mean from my original 6 planned chemo cycles, I would go down to only 3. The doctor tried to explain it to me but I don’t understand yet. The chemo is to make the radiation more effective they said and the main thing is the internal, Brachytherapy.
Here is when the Brachytherapy happens – details on a different post – but the doctor tells me she wants to give me that chemo that I had missed and so it is scheduled for after the Brachytherapy and radiation is finished. I am going out on a bang for sure because the Cisplatin chemo is the hardest thing out of the three types of treatment.
Cisplatin No. 5
OMG this IS the last one. For sure this time. I begrudgingly attend the Cancer Centre and wait to get my bloods done and chat with the doctor. Since my third Brachytherapy – which entailed having a catheter fitted each time – I am still trying to remember how I pee. It’s like you have to coach your body to get peeing again. It’s bizarre. It’s a little painful and takes ages. And generally my bowels have had a beating with all the radiation – external and internal – and so the nurses are concerned I might be retaining and so the doctor sends me for a X-Ray and everything is fine. Although I am given pills for constipation later on that day my bowels reverse and I now need pills for diarrhoea….however much I love pain relief medication, I just want my body to sort this out by itself. So I don’t take the pills and a week on everything is normal again. Yay! OMG how grateful you can be when the simplest of things, like going to the loo, is taken away and you get it back again.
They are all aware of my cannula problems and so a head nurse puts it into that risky vein. I warn her I might cry for no apparent reason other that there is a freaking needle in my arm but they get concerned every time and offer me diazepam. I’m not into it, I dry my eyes, calm myself down and watch TV while the drugs get pumped through my body.
My poor body. I generally am sorry for it. It’s upsetting that you agree to have chemo drugs administered to it and yet you know or are aware that chemo is killing the cancer cells. One line is screamed in your head ‘This chemo is killing me.’ And it is. It is killing all my cells. I apologise to my veins and go back to watching Location, Location, Location. Phil and Kirsty can distract me for a little while.
As on cue, one hour before it’s all done, as has happened with all the Cisplatin chemo days, I start to get nauseated. I call the nurses to have anti-sickness injected into my stomach area and half hour later, I get another one. It’s pretty full on this time and I throw up over 6 times. Blood is even coming up and I call for the nurse, who calls the doctor who asks if I had been eating mints that day. “Yes, pretty much all types of mints and all throughout the day.” And so the blood doesn’t faze her and my sickness becomes tiredness and I am invited to stay the night over. My fiancee stays over with me on a fold out bed which is great as he is able to bring me water, help me out of bed and generally be totally awesome.
The next day I get to leave after breakfast. I don’t have any more sickness just exhausted. I walk out of the Cancer Centre and raise my hands in the air. It’s over.
I did eventually give in to that fast food craving by the way. It took 5 days to cave in but after trying to find what exactly my body was searching for, nothing was appeasing the mind from having that McChicken sandwich. I did it, I went to McDonald’s and had the meal and I felt great haha. It took care of the craving and that’s that.
The Uninvited Guest - Cervical Cancer 