Well this week is starting to feel increasingly strange for me. I’m a teacher, just raring up to go back to work next week, finishing all those little jobs around the house and making the most of the last few days. Exactly the same as I have done for 30 years. Except for last year.
Last year at this point, one of my sons was visiting and we went on a lovely boat trip and saw dolphins surrounding us. The following day, he was going back home, but my other son had to give him a lift to the station as I had this really uncomfortable tummy ache that had woken me up in the night and was niggling away in the background.
I didn’t end up going back to school until early March.
I ended up calling 111 that afternoon, for advice really. They made me an appointment at Urgent Care. A few prods and pokes and it was a suspected appendicitis so over to A and E. A CT scan, and the news that there was a possible malignancy in my ascending colon. Couple of days later and the colonoscopy confirmed it.
Within a week of meeting my 5cm circumferencial tumour, I had a right hemicolectomy and it was all gone. A week in hospital (my bowel decided to have a snooze for a few days) and a gradual recovery. It was a horrible tumour, with 2 lymph nodes affected, so Stage 3. And so began the CAPOX.
After the preliminary blood test confirmed I had the DPD deficiency, I had my Oxalaplatin and a half dose of capecitabine. Not good. I can’t really describe how terrifying my body’s reaction was, but I now know it caused capecitabine-induced cardiac vasospasm. It took another cycle and an even more terrifying experience to confirm it. My chemo was stopped just before Christmas.
Since then, CT scans have found a funny little node on my lung, but with no changes it’s probably not cancer. I have put on weight, but I’m happier to have a bit of meat on my bones at last. Once I’ve eaten, it doesn’t take long before I need a quick trip to the loo, but it’s predictable and not terrifying. I do get tired, but life tends to do that anyway.
I feel a bit weird this week, because it’s all come back to me. At the time, I just accepted each part of the journey quite easily and simply got on with it. It was other people who seemed to be affected by my diagnosis, more than I was. I think the word “cancer” fills us all with unknown terror, but what I went through was well-documented and I was treated like royalty throughout the whole experience. It’s only really hitting me now that it was and is quite serious and although I am very much alive and happy, it was a brush with facing my own mortality which was very humbling.
I wish everyone here the positivity and peace that I found in my experiences. I hope your fears are alleviated a bit by reading other people’s stories and I hope you place your faith in the incredible healthcare professionals who are well versed in these terrible things and use every ounce of their wisdom and knowledge to get us all through.
Take Care, and I hope to see you all back here next year with your own stories.
