I bet that got your attention, didn’t it? Just wanted to make sure I got you 100% for this next pronouncement because this is really important. Cancer really does change everything and in many, strange and interesting ways. Like…
Marmite.
Yep, I have fallen completely, overwhelmingly, salivatingly in love with Marmite. WOW! And I mean, WOW! I always did like Marmite so was never in the hate camp, but I am now totally addicted. If this is food-porn, I want a full subscription to the Marmite Channel. I am experiencing the most deliciously, filthy, bitter, salty, sweet food sympathy. Toast, butter and marmite. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Worth having chemo for? Probably.
And this new craving for Marmite is solely because it is now one of the few food stuffs that actually tastes something like it should. Everything else is cardboard. All the things I love to eat, I no longer want to eat. Everything tastes different, a bit tinny, a bit metallic or just plain bland. Like vanilla-bland but without the essence. Or it is so extreme it’s like, “Woooaaaahhh!”.Chocolate makes my fillings feel molten. Cheese tastes like what it is, sour milk. And as for red meat, I consider myself an honorary veggie now. Even bacon has been smoked out. But don’t ever think that means that I would ever replace Marmite with Vegemite. That will never, ever happen. Ever. Ok?
So, food tastes more extreme or extremely bland. Nothing in between. And the reason for this? I am having chemo. Have I told you that before? And because of chemo, I have thrush. Yes, thrush. But not, you know, down there. No, I have it my mouth. Yes, my mouth. Imagine explaining that to your wife. “Hi, you know I have that cancer thing going on, well I have something even worse to tell you about. I have thrush”. Which part of that sentence did my wife hear? You got it. As my youngest would say, “Awkward!”. And it really is. Like having a mouth-full of cotton-wool that has first been dipped in rust and then left to soak in the dregs from a CAMRA festival drip tray. For 2 whole weeks. A cat’s tongue licking sweaty sock.
And all because I am having chemo and that is what I am supposed to be telling you about in today’s missive, my chemo. Not anyone else’s chemo because I don’t know much about that, but I am definitely getting to know mine. And I know justhow much youwant meto share everythingwith you.
I have chemo every other Monday. I will have 12 cycles over 22 weeks. Or 5 ½ months. Let that sink in. Half a year. An eternity. 3 days ago, I completed, finished, smashed the 6thof 12 sessions. Woohoo! I am half-way through, 50% complete. “Wow, AMAZING!” I hear you say. Except, it doesn’t feel like that right now. Right now, I feel defeated, depleted, tired, exhausted and sick. And pissed off because, well, chemo is brutal.
And it does changes everything. Your body especially. For me at least, it’s not big, massive, obvious stuff that is completely like, “OMG!”but more the little things that creep up on you and you notice it has happened, like, “Oh, ok. Right then, wasn’t expecting that”.
I thought I hadn’t lost any hair but last week I noticed that my feet are now bald. Where once I had hair, I now have plucked chicken skin. And my youngest daughter filmed the top of my head. The rate that my hair is thinning has accelerated so fast past the ‘headland of hopelessness’that I winced as I saw my thatch disappear into the distance. I ached but how she laughed. Heart-warming. My hair is my saving grace. Was. One day you don’t feel quite so ill and actually take some time to take a look at yourself and BAM! you notice something else is no longer quite all there.
I have dropped 4 dress sizes, I reckon. I think I am now probably a size 12. My wife says I am closer to a 10. “My, thank you.” Or to be more accurate, I am 3 belt-holes smaller. I am now on the last hole on my belt and it’s no longer a tight fit. That belt-hole and I have never had any form of contact apart from the odd fleeting, wistful look from me but now we are joined at the hip (see what I did there?). Clearly, I needed to lose some weight - I get that - but it just keeps dropping off. In odd places. Like my knees. And my chest. I have a chemo port under the skin on my right breast. It is where the poison goes every other Monday and I have lost so much weight there it looks like John Hurt’s alien; protruding, ready to burst out. My youngest daughter says, “Euww, disgusting”. Nice. Supportive as any teenager could be.
And just because I am sharing, it is very noticeable that, with about 30% less colon to play with and with chemo in play, my pooing is no longer a standard biological process that just happens when and as but, rather, it is now an event, a statement. It either doesn’t happen for 4 days or happens 4 times a day, minimum. How do I describe it? It’s either like shitting a fist or aerosoling chocolate silly string(see what I almost did there?). And the departure is either a painfully long procession, like a royal crowning, or a quick bundling out of the tradesmen’s with little or no notice. Seriously. And that means my bum is shredded. Piles? Pah! You haven’t lived until you have had a rectal tear. And tears. They come together.
And my skin looks old. I look at the back of my hands and they look like Jonny Cash’s face.
And I am knackered. It really hit me a couple of days ago, just how utterly shattered I am. All of the time.
And I will stop now. Enough moaning. Deep breath…
So, back to my chemo. It’s on a Monday. I chose to do it on a Monday as Monday always seems like a good day to start something. It’s the beginning of the working week, my grown-up routine. The clinic is spotless. Everything is clean, new, white, cream, gleaming. It feels healthy. Comforting. I have the same 2 nurses each time; they know me a little by now. They know how we deal with the chemo, with mirth and a cheeky smile. With a jokey aside. It can’t ever be too serious. I take out my laptop, headphones, mini-keyboard, power-pack, i-pod, phone, gonk and book, take off my shoes and climb aboard my business-class seat ready for the flight to the ‘Isle of Nausea’. If you haven’t seen a chemo-chair, they are just as described except served by medical rather than airline crew. And that is a good thing. Wouldn’t want people with no experience running this shit.
I start with a weight check. Every other week it goes down. If I were at a slimming club, I would be super-psyched and winning the battle but, for now, each time, it just makes me feel that little bit smaller. Like I am being eaten away. Then we move onto the chemo line being inserted into the chemo port. “Breathe in”and there we are, all ready to go. All very easy, just annoyingly uncomfortable. Then my line gets flushed, cleaned out. Precise and medical. Then blood tests to see whether I am healthy enough to be poisoned. And, I am, so the 1stbag goes up and I am drip-fed anti-nausea drugs for an hour. Cold. Freezing. Really. I can feel the icy, clean fluid entering my body. Feel it running through me. Makes me feel a little sick. Anti-nausea drugs that make me feel a little sick. Oh, the irony. And then we move onto the serious shit, the chemo drugs.
I am on a course of chemo named FolFox. I get a 2-hour intensive ‘hit’ pumped direct to the source, a train-load of chemicals wrecking its way on a runaway ride through my body. Down every bloody track. I can feel it. I really can. The same sensation as an opiate drug high as it flows to your extremities: your toes, your fingers, your ears, your nose. Except this hurts. Not the eye-watering, fist-biting, stub your toe type of hurt, more like ‘hitting the wall’ at the end of a marathon, type of hurt. A long, deep hurt.
And after that? I get fitted with a magical ball of chemo, a present to take home with me. Magical because I cannot fathom how it works, not because it feels magical. You know the warm, happy feeling you get when you see the magical kingdom at the start of a Disney movie and you know it’s all going to be fine? Well, nothing like that. This ball pumps more chemo shit into me over the next 40+ hours. And that is when it all goes a bit more south, when I sit at home in my PJ’s feeling like I am a hostage in a home freezer, dripping with snot through a nose I can no longer feel, shivering in my hat, scarf and gloves despite the heating being turned up to tropical. Feeling like I want to puke but having nothing to puke because just the very thought of food, eeeuuugghhh! Testing my blood sugars EVERY hour to make sure I don’t have another Diabetic Ketoacidosis episode. Hitting that marathon wall again and again and again.
Bloody nose. Sore mouth. Furry tongue. Sore elbows. Freezing fingers. Sore heart. Sore everything.
But then it gets better. It really does. I am now on Day 3 after my last chemo and the feeling of nausea, the fever, the headache, the full body-slam pain, they are all dissipating, becoming more manageable. Much more. The taste in my mouth and the electro-shock pins and needles in my fingers? They just are. But thanks to Marmite and winter woolies, they are also manageable.
It’s all just a new routine really. And what keeps me going is the thought that sometime before I get to my next chemo, I might just have a day or 2 where I might just manage to feel just about normal.
Whatever that is.
