Just when I Thought I Was Out:Chemotherapy by Holly Searle

There's that scene in The Godfather where Michael Corleone expresses his frustration his fate's inability to allow him to disassociate himself from his mob ties. "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!" He rasps, fists clenched.

That was me when I started my chemotherapy post operative part of my treatment.

I had literally just learnt to walk upright again without pain and regained some energy, when they stuck another cannula into my vein and filled my battered body with a racy pink cocktail of chemo mega mix. Two for one, 4 times, every 21 days until early November.

During my first session, my vanity told me to wear the Cold Cap: a contraption invented to freeze your scalp to -4 in the hope that your blood flow, with the tasty chemo on board, avoids your hair follicles to prevent hair loss.

However great an ideal this maybe, it's really just an additional sensory overload considering the needle in your hand and the warm gel pad on your arm to keep your vein open and receptive.

Plus, I just looked like Woody Allen in Sleepers (see image at the end of this post, then google Sleepers and have a laugh on me. Not at me!)

Before and after chemo, they fill you with anti sickness drugs, and pre filled injections that are meant to help boast your immunity system, that you self inject into your stomach for 5 days after your session.

After session one, I was so sick I thought I was going to die. The sickness was awful. It took days for my stomach to settle and for me to actually find food tasty or edible again. I still ate and have puffed up as a consequence, which makes me very depressed, but I shall deal with that later.

They tell you to buy a good thermometer, as you have to take your temperature every day. They worry that you'll develop all sorts, as in the first ten days after your session, your immunity is plummeting to zero at a horrifically rapid rate and taking your temp temperature is a good rule of thumb to monitor if there is something more sinister happening.

You develop chemo brain. Which is like a fog inside your head obstructing your ability to think properly about anything.

Best to avoid busy places or people with germs.

Hard call that last one when you live in a city with population of 8 million.

After the sickness subsided, there is a limited period of time when I felt like eating food that I wanted to eat. But then when I ate, I had stomach ache. Don't even ask about the constipation. That saucy little chemo mega mix obviously has the same effect (and ingredients) on my internal organs as a bag of cement mix.

I was sourcing Senna Tablets like an addict hot for her next fix.

To pass your poo without feeling like you are shitting rock, is a pleasure I thought I would never write about. I am sure they deleted that line from The Godfather.

Then I had a series of odd little illnesses and a dry cough that lasted for a short period of time and an unrelenting need to sleep, that even Sleeping Beauty couldn't relate to.

Then it was time for my next session, before which I have to get my blood taken to make sure I am well enough to have my next chemo. I used to be a blood donor, I was always proud of how quickly my blood filled the bag at those sessions. But when I went to get my blood taken for the test, my vein had constricted that the phlebotomist couldn't even get a drop out. So he took it from my hand and I cried as it was so painful. He said "I am really sorry." I said " I can't wait for the day when no one is sticking needles in me."

Then you wait for the oncologist to tell you if your okay. I was surprisingly as I felt so shit. " Your bloods are fine, although your liver is a bit dodgy. We'll keep an eye on that."

Is it really surprising that my liver is having a mass panic? I don't even drink alcohol!

So there I was session two out of four. No Cold Cap this time as I wanted to talk to my chemo buddies and hear their stories, rather than worry about my now dead hair falling or looking like Woody Allen.

They are a nice bunch and just like me, they are just people who are going through the same crappy treatment so that they can get on with their lives.

They gave me additional anti sickness this time. That worked. I wasn't sick, but still felt sick. Smells, mention of food, the smell of smoking or perfume, all turn my stomach.

Then the chemo brain starts again. You feel like your doing everything in slow motion and have the worst hangover in the world. This time, the tiredness was just awful and I haven't been able to do as much. It's incredibly frustrating and annoying and I cried the night before my second session and it was one of the first times my repressed angry about having cancer surfaced.

I didn't want my life to be like this: but it is, for now, until it's done and dusted and this cancer is out of my bloody life and I can close the door in its face like Michael Corleone did to his estranged wife Kay.

Sometimes, you have to be cruel to be kind.

And The Wind Cries Mary - By Holly Searle

I am not going to lie to you. I am absolutely terrified of embarking on my chemotherapy treatment. This whole cancer thing has been exhausting. I absolutely hate it. For the last five months it's been at the top of my agenda and I just wish it would stop. Sometimes I fantasize about just going away somewhere peaceful to digest it all, as it all just feels like too much at once.

The suspicion, the diagnosis, the advice, the education, the treatment plan, the operation, the recovery and now I will have to deal with the shitstorm that is the FEC-T chemotherapy treatment.

A few weeks ago, I had an appointment to see the oncologist. This was the part two if you will of my cancer narrative: they operate, then they decide the best course of follow on treatment to avoid the cancer returning within the next ten years.

So I am curious to meet with the doctor, to have this appointment and to find out what my next task will be. I wait 90 minutes passed my appointed time to see her.

When I finally hear my name called, she beckons me into her consulting room. She's no fool, as she obviously notices straightaway that my face looks like a wet weekend in Bognor, because she asks me if I am okay.

'Yes, I am fine' I tell her 'I am just a bit annoyed at having to wait an hour and a half.'

We proceed. We sit. And she asks me how long I have been dealing with cancer and if I could give her a synopsis of my cancer treatment. This tells me that she hasn't read my notes, not a great start. So I tell her the concise but detailed version aware that someone else in the waiting area has now taken my place and is checking their watch.

Mid flow, a woman enters the room. The consultant says 'This is my registrar, she wants to ask me a question about Mary.'

I pause, what now, or in a minute I wonder to myself. The registrar is silent, so I carry on talking aware of this woman now waiting to speak. There's a queue here love and if I don't say my bit, I am prone to forget all the juicy bits because the doctor hasn't read my notes.

Then the consultant starts to speak really really fast whilst illustrating the points she is making with drawings. I can't look and listen and digest it all with the added pressure of woman behind me waiting to ask about Mary.

She asks me if my hair is dyed and says that it will all probably fall out and that I need to be aware that this chemotherapy treatment can actually cause cancer to grow again in my body.

Then the desk phone starts ringing and the doctor answers it, but holds the handset in the air away from her ear and carries on talking. I think aren't both of these actions, the woman here about Mary and the person now listening about me in breach of some sort of code or something?

She takes the call and I am sure this is a set up. She hangs up and I ask her a question about the treatment she is proposing. I ask her what the percentage is of my cancer returning if you don't have this treatment. She tells me that there is a program online somewhere that explains all of this but that she really needs to speak to her registrar about Mary.

I ask her if she would like me to leave? She says no no no. I am to wait here until she comes back.

I am now alone in the room that I have waited over an hour and a half to gain access to. The phone starts ringing again. I am tempted to pick it up and tell them that she is not here and that she has left me alone during my appointment to have a meeting with her registrar about someone else.

I don't. But, I am tempted.

Then there is a knock at the door and the nice breast cancer nurse comes in. She asks me where the doctor is, so I say having a meeting with her registrar about someone else.

I am really annoyed now. 15 minutes of fast talking and diagrams, but I am not really that clear about what I am having and why I am having it. I later log a complaint and ask for another appointment with another oncologist.

Most of the information I have ascertained about the proposed treatment has been via the nurse, a booklet, my friends and the internet.

It's all pretty shit and is making this bit of the treatment a festival of anxieties for me. I don't want to me pumped full of poison that will make me sick and tired. Or have port inserted a vein next to my heart placed there via another operation. Or worry about the chemo ruining my veins with the possibility of damage to my heart or lungs. I am such a secret hypochondriac, that this is playing havoc with my nerves.

I do not want to do this. I haven't been brave, I have just got on with it, because that's the only option you have if you want to not have cancer.

But now my courage is failing as I do not want these chemicals invading my body and lowering my my immune system. I do not want to be vulnerable any more, I just want it all to stop.

I am in line to have some counselling when a therapist becomes available and I shall look forward to it as I am mentally bruised from all of this.

I used to love this book when I was a child about a bull that just like sitting under a tree and smelling flowers. One day he gets stung by a bee and jumps about and they think he is fierce and take him the Madrid the flight the Matadors in the bullring. But he just sits there smelling all the flowers in the hats of the seated ladies in the audience. So, in the end they take him back to his field, where he sits under the tree and just peacefully smells the flowers again.

That book, is the story of my cancer treatment and the way I feel about it.

Spit Spot!