Chemo Day.
Or more precisely, night before chemo day and I'm rolling around in my bed with the worst period cramps and all I can think of is 'Give ME a break! This is the worst timing.'
4 am - one panadol later and I'm finally asleep.
7.30 am - I feel like pestilence, with a bad hair day. (Side bar, I went to the cancer support centre and asked the hairdresser for a hair cut, which she spent 45 minutes doing and it turned out great. I felt a bit bad, as in approximately 10 days my hair is going to fall out and I'll have to just go straight back in there for her to shave it off.)
Anyway, as is always the case, when you are on second day of a new hair cut, you wake up in the morning and it looks like a large tongued cow snuck into your room in the middle of the night and took to sucking on your new 'Do' for hours on end, till its just at the right level of horrendous.
I stumble out of bed and in an effort to remain calm I drink a cup of warm water with lemon and do some gentle yoga, hoping it makes a difference. But I'm as antsy as anything and to make matters worse - I have THE most GIGANTIC right breast! I silently wail at the absurdity of the situation.
Clearly my brain or hormones have not realised that I have had a mastectomy (did they not receive the memo) and I have swollen menstrual boobs except the expander boob has swollen to twice its size and far outdone my other, normal boob.
I contemplate putting on a support bra to strap it in but give up, being completely lopsided (physically and mentally) on today of all days is the least of my worries.
When I get to the car park of the hospital I feel like being unwell, even before I start but I get out of the car and hobble to the cancer suite. Unlike my pre-assessment, when I went in and was confronted with being the new kid on the block (kid being the word, as I was, by far the youngest person there), I had more of an idea what I was doing and when my disc buzzer went off I resolutely trotted off down to the treatment wing, my boyfriend in tow.
Lovely comfy chairs, reclining, TV screen, nice view out the window, friendly staff - like any of that was making a jot of difference. My heart was trying to climb out of my chest and do a runner on me and my hormones were rebelling. I was beginning to tear up and I was silently praying, oh no, oh no, please not now, I can't break into sniveling sobs now, I need to get through this as coherently as possible. I bit my lip and tried to distract myself from the oncoming tears and turned my attention to my poor boyfriend, who was slowly edging his seat nearer to me, as the look of panic, fear and teary terror flitted across my face. He started talking about paint for the walls of his new house. A conversation ensued about magnolia verses white.
The most boring, uninteresting but panic distracting conversation I've had in a while.
The nurse arrived with a tray, a rather large tray, with a rather large array of injections. Gulp.
She turns over my arm and grins at me, 'First Day?'
I nod my head.
'Good, lets hope we can get some juicy veins this morning'.
Juicy veins...oh no!
They were pathetic, tiny skinny wimpy veins and I had to immerse my arm in warm water to try and get them to wake up. Eventually the needle, after a couple of attempts, struck something and the pumping of toxins began.
F is for..
Not sure. Flora bore alice or something like that (Fluorauracil). White, harmless looking, side effects: sore mouth, ulcers, loss of taste, lower resistance to infection.
E is for....
Not sure. Epic rubies or something along those lines (Epirubicin). Ruby red, as the name suggests, side effects: hair loss, nausea, vomiting, lower resistance to infection.
C is for...
Not sure. Cyclopse hiding (Cyclophosphamide). White, innocuous, side effects: lower resistance to infection.
Five syringes in total, slowly drip, drip, dripped through, with saline as a chaser. I think I would have preferred to pump 100% vodka through my veins than the cocktail of choice which the nurse charmingly gave me.
My thin, puny vein stayed triumphant till the last, only two small syringes of anti-sickness drugs to go.
The holy grail for cancer patients, anti sickness drugs. They looked pretty harmless to me.
The nurse was serious for a minute, eye balling me across the drip line and her blue gloved hands.
'Side effects..', she says.
Oh holy....not more side effects.
If I had a list for all the side effects I was going to be subjected to it would be as long as the bayeux tapestry.
I concentrated on her words completely, dreading what was coming.
'Have you ever sat on a bed of nettles with no underwear on?' she asked me calmly.
My brain froze at the mental image, tying to decipher if I had misheard her words.
'Ummm, no.' I responded meekly.
'Well that is what one patient described this as. Not everyone gets it and it comes on after about thirty seconds and only last for about 30 seconds.'
I look at her aghast as she slowly pushed the small vial of clear fluids into my vein.
I tense up, my nether regions alert, waiting for nettle knickers.
Nothing.
Phew.
She takes out the syringe and loads up a different fluid for anti sickness.
I relax.
OH OH...Dance in my pants, DANCE IN MY PANTS. Ouch, EEeeeekkkkkkk! I shuffle my bum around in the seat. My boyfriend looks at me, the nurse looks at me, my eyes are bulging.
'Nettles?' asks the nurse.
'mmmm hmmmm', I reply. Unsure if its wise for me to speak.
'One woman liked it so much', she confides in me, 'that she asked for a second syringe'.
I baulk at the notion. One session of nettle knickers is enough for me, thank you very much.
One hour forty five minutes later and my first chemo session is over.
I sigh with relief. I feel a bit overwhelmed when I come out into the brightness of the day and think, I need a snooze.
I go home and wait for whatever is to come next and in the comfort of my bed I cradle my traitorous gargantuan boob.
The cheek of it, to misbehave on this of all days.
I drift off to sleep and in the back of my head, I know its only a matter of time till FEC comes a knocken'.
