Feels much more daunting that it actually is. You arrive, get bloods taken, weight measured, have a chat with your consultant to check everything is ok then there is a period of a few hours that I was able to leave for lunch and come back in time for chemo.
You are given a chair in a room of another five. It wasn’t overly busy and the nurses prepare you for intravenous cannula. They tried seven times with four different nurses. It was because I was just so dam nervous and after I asked my fiancee to go for a little walk and cleared my mind and went to a ‘happy place’ as such, a nurse who I had previously had spoken to before was successful in her first attempt. I bring that down to less distractions and feeling at ease with this nurse. Phew. They only normally try 6 times but they saw I wasn’t getting too emotional and was ok to continue.
An appointment for a PICC line was put in place. This in effect would stop the need to have any more needles from the blood tests every week to having the actual chemo. Great I thought. That’s next week. Basically a PICC line is a thin line that is threaded through your vein from you arm to your heart. It would be there for the duration of my treatments.
They give you three different anti-sickness drugs through your cannula. These consist of stomach lining, steroids and another one which made me nice and drowsy. Then the Taxol for one hour, little saline flush and Carboplatin for half an hour finishing in another flush of the line, removal of the cannula and head home.
I slept from 8pm right through to the morning. And took my pills as instructed for the next two days. On the third day I noticed my heart was quite irregular at night time and I phoned into their 24hr Oncology team to report it. They discussed it with the doctor and by the time they called me back it had ceased. A follow up call the next morning was arranged and everything was fine. I then had some stomach cramps and muscle pain but nothing too life halting. The muscle pain is strange though – your skin is so tender and daren’t anyone touch you because it’s sore. Get that bra off and get into your comfies I say!
That weekend, not knowing how the chemo would affect me as time went on, I had arranged with a friend of mine to have my hair cut and for him to photograph the process. I flew to Leeds with my fiancee and my two brothers travelled to the studio to help out. They brought champagne and with a hair stylist we got to work at photographing my luscious curls, plaiting my hair in preparation for donation to Little Princess Trust (wigs for children with cancer, boys and girls) and then I saw what I will look like with a pixie cut, a mohawk and then the shaved head. Gosh I was so nervous, even thinking I may not go through with it and just take each stage at it came. But with the support and the champagne bubbles I just went for it. That’s what I had come to do, the photographs were looking great and I would eventually be doing it anyways so why not now.
Thank you to Steve Robertson, Amy Sontae and to my fiancee Ryan and brothers Lee and Robin. Could not have done this without you. The photo shoot and the hair styling distracted from the reasons of why I was doing this to just doing it and having fun with it. And I like my new look. I’d never have had the guts to shave all my hair off and now I know what I look like. Cool hair cuts are on the menu for me. Who knows if I’ll go back to the long hair….I actually lost 4lbs with losing it!
The Uninvited Guest - Cervical Cancer 