Chemo Euphoria

Chemotherapy euphoria Now I realise why I had never joined Cancerbackup or written anything before my operation. There is something about chemotherapy, something that doesn’t leave any time for anything other than living. The first week I feel so awful that I lie in bed in fear of the telephone or the simple demands of love from my kids. I groan and gag and crawl out of bed only to crawl back into it five minutes later. I sip water and shun most solids. I sleep. It feels like it will never end. Then all of a sudden after a week I feel normal again! Normal, I can get out bed without gagging; I can put the kettle on and have a cuppa; I can breathe in the smells of cooking and not retch; I can eat… I can smile at my kids; I can moan, shout and nag my loved ones; I am not hunched over and I do not feel as if I have lead for blood. Feeling normal is like being given a gift. Everyone who sees me looks quizzically at me, “You look good,” they say, obviously confused and worried about saying the wrong thing, “How do you feel?” “Good, great, normal,” I say. Normal is good, is great, is a surprise, normal is something that I always took for granted. The next two weeks find me playing catch up after the first week. I try to banish the sight of the red liquid going into the port and the sick feeling it leaves me with. I try to be normal, look after my kids and get back to living my life. It doesn’t leave me with much time to do anything else. The week after chemo I cannot do anything and the second and third week I try to forget about the first week. I can no longer drink anything red as the mere sight sends me gasping to the toilet. However, this may not be such a bad thing as I reckon vodka and cranberry or strawberry Fanta are not to be trusted anyway. Three sessions of chemo over and the summer holidays finished and I am back at my computer again. Radiotherapy started and I have a few hours a day to myself when I am not in the traffic or tending to the needs of my little ones. Oh what joy! My hair grew back despite the first session of chemo. The kids in my class loved it. They begged to see the new thatch growing. They all stroked it, all 20 of them. They decided that I could no longer be “baldy” and decided instead for the chant, “Miss is a boy, miss is a boy…” Obviously short hair in Mexico is something that only boys have. A good boost to the battered ego, not. So I tried to explain that girls can have short hair too but those pearls of wisdom fell on the barren ground of their four year old social integration and quickly leaked away to be replaced by images of Barbie and not Barbie. Then they returned to eating their lunch and picked up their conversations leaving me to muse over whether short hair and one tit did in fact make me a boy. A moment later one little girl came over and put her hand on my knee. “I know you are not a boy,” she reassured me, “Why don’t you just put your pink scarf back on and then you will be a girl again?” Ah the simplicity of the solution. I should have realised, and me so proud of my new hair. The hair lasted the first session of chemo. It did not curl as all had said it might, but it flourished. I caught a cold and called my consultant on her mobile. I wondered if I would have been able to do that in the UK. I guess not. She prescribed some antibiotics and told me not to worry. I bought the pills in the pharmacy as one does here without a prescription. (In fact the only pills I have ever had that needed a prescription were the sleeping tablet my gynaecologist prescribed when this all started. I was so shocked by their status that I only took 2 and then I hid them on the top shelf behind my sweaters like a gun.) I spent a few days worrying about my white blood cells and thinking that I had an ear infection. I am a victim of the paranoia that sets in when chemo sends you to the hospital because of low resistance. I guess the injections that I take work and the fight for them after the insurance “forgot” to order them was worthwhile. It was worth crawling across the street in my pjs to send a fax to the insurance company to prove that my doctor had programmed the chemo and included the injections to be delivered to my house. It was worth speaking to a range of people, doctors, pharmacists and of course insurance agents when I felt like absolute crap and should have been asleep. It was worth ordering the injections and paying for them only to be phoned two days later on the Monday to be told my injections were ready and did I want them delivered. No I did not I had already handed in a claim for 400 pounds for the injections that I needed to have Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It was worth it as my blood cells were better after chemo than they had been after six weeks of recovery time after my operation. Still my blood tests send me into fits of worries, as I have never had so many anomalies starred before. Why have I got high cholesterol? I have never had this before and now I am draining countless cups of green tea and eating more vegetables than Peter Rabbit. How did it happen? It is all part of the menopausal state that chemo has caused I am told. “Don’t worry,” the oncologist tells me, “It will even itself out after chemo finishes.” “Fine, but does this mean that when I do actually go into menopause I will have the hot flushes, the weight gain and the high cholesterol all over again?” “Almost definitely,” I am told. “That’s if you get that far,” the little voice inside my head nags. “Ten years is quite a long time!” I question the lack of feeling in fingertips and wonder about the cold shivers that contrast the hot flushes. Those I am told are just symptoms of the chemo and I shouldn’t expect those to return after ten years. Every cloud etc. I didn’t ask the oncologist about the fact that I seem to be getting premature Alzheimer’s as well as the menopause. She is a wonderful doctor and she is willing to assure me and answer my questions, even on her mobile phone. I don’t want to push my luck and fall into the moaning, hypochondriactic bitch status that I clearly deserve. However, I feel like my brain is turning to mush. I forget things and I am just not really with it… more so than before. I went to the park with my children and the lady who helps me with them and when we were ready to go home I nearly drove off without her. She was standing in the street looking confused when I went round the block and picked her up. I couldn’t even think of a lie to tell her for having driven off without her. I got lost going to pick up my son from a friends house. I got so lost I ran out of petrol. “You need a GPS system,” says my husband. “Of course I don’t,” I say, “I just need an early night.” After my second session of chemo my dad came from the UK to visit. It was lovely to see him and we just hung out with the kids and did stuff like going to the park. He was just happy to see that I was OK and we had a relaxing ten days not doing much except kids’ things. My hair lasted the second session and my dad said I looked like a French film star. Bless him. When he left I had a few days before going on a family holiday and still no chicken fillets. What those boys in customs are up to I have no idea! I phoned the shop and cried, “I don’t mind socks in my bra in the city but I am going to the beach.” “Come over, we’ll see what we can do,” the lady reassured me. She lent me a bra and gave me a chicken fillet that she just happened to have lying around. It looked suspiciously like the one I tried on to get my size originally but I guess they do look alike. She gave me a plain black bikini, which was definitely the one I tried on before I ordered a lovely tankini that some transvestite Veracruz customs man is now wearing. However, beggars can’t be choosers and all that. We had a lovely time at the beach with one of my closest friends and her family. It was quite nice to be told not to go in the sun as I actually got some down time reading my book and watching from my sunshade as the children and other adults splashed in the pool and sea! The bikini is fine but it does gape when I bend over to lift the boys or to swim. I used to worry about flashing cleavage and giving everyone an eye full but now it would be more of an eye empty. Certainly enough to put anyone off their cold beer. Serves them right for looking. We got back from holiday and I had my third chemo to complete the six sessions. It doesn’t seem much especially when I read about some of you guys who have had ten, just to start with. However, it has taken over my life and at times made me feel so bad. I cross my fingers and toes and arms over my revealing bikini to hope I will not have to have anymore. After chemo we have almost got into a routine. I come out of my room to eat and my husband and his mother take care of the children. As I was sneaking back to bed one day my youngest son caught me by the hand. “No more mummy shh shh,” he said. He didn’t want me to go back to sleep. I think he thought I had slept enough for one day. It made me cry but I couldn’t even face getting out of my pyjamas. To make up for my totally neglecting my children my husband took them to a Starwars exhibition. They were gone for six hours. I think they had more fun without me, as I can never stand more than a couple of hours at those things. My husband can now take both boys out his own without melt down. It has been a steep learning curve for both of us. He still doesn’t pack the nappy bag to take with him or unpack it when he gets back, but maybe he does that so that I still feel in control a bit. So that I can sigh and huff and feel that things would fall apart if I was indisposed for longer than a few days. My husband also washed up… once. As I lay half comatose, half watching Olympic diving I heard the slosh of water and clink of clean plates being placed on the draining board. I hadn’t even asked him to do it. I hadn’t even sighed loudly as I passed the kitchen or searched for a clean cup to use. I must remember that, even when I am fit again, in terms of childcare or housework I did not marry a complete incompetent and he can no longer claim to be so. I will have to make a time for going to a yoga class and leave them all to get on with it. I know that they can cope very well without me thank you. Though hopefully, only for a few hours.