As we move into the New Year I find myself reflecting on the past year and all that it brought with it. I remember this time last year thinking if one more person told me that it was going to be a better year I would scream (in fact I think I did scream.... several times). Yes I had had my surgery but was still only two months into six months of really harsh treatment, I had no hair and no energy, and my whole body was bloating from the chemo and all the medication that goes with it. Money was also starting to become an issue. I felt like a freak and just didn't have the energy to do anything about it, if there was in fact anything I could do. Happy New Year back at you!!
It's very difficult for me to describe what chemo was like. In some ways it was nowhere near as bad as I had expected yet in others it was absolutely awful. The actual transfusion was nothing to be scared of. I refused a PICC Line which in hindsight was probably a silly thing to do as it might have saved my veins and as I can only have blood tests in one arm now it would be nice if there was more than one viable vein. For someone who has always been very scared of needles and blood tests I handled the insertion of the cannula quite well. Hats off to the extremely caring and competent phlebotomists that administered the chemo, they are truly angels. Once hooked up there was nothing to it, just lie back and sleep, read or watch everyone else. It was quite amazing how quickly those 3-4 hours went and if I was lucky the hospital even provided me with some nice sandwiches.
Once home I felt surprisingly good if not a little tired. The day after was a day that I relished during that time. It was my me day where I didn't have to work yet I still felt reasonably good, it soon became the one day in each three week cycle that I looked forward to. I couldn't go anywhere as I didn't like to drive with all those drugs coursing through my system so a friend used to come over to keep me company. This was a really good time to catch up with her and get to know her all over again. The five to ten days after this are best not revisited. I find that I can look back on chemo and say oh it wasn't so bad until someone asks me about something specifically or a smell, taste or sound (like a tv show) reminds me of it, then it all comes flooding back and can bring me to tears in an instant. I was fairly lucky with my side effects, I hate to think what other people go through.
I'll never forget the dates 22 October 2009 and 2 February 2010. These are the days I started chemotherapy and finished it. Once diagnosed with something like cancer you have a whole new set of dates to remember as anniversaries. Hopefully these dates will get harder to remember over the years but I doubt it. 8 February I start radiotherapy. I had already had my planning appointment and that in itself was interesting. It involved having a CT scan but luckily without the dye being injected which meant no needles and no feeling like I had peed my pants. I had to disrobe from the waist upwards and the nurse was nice enough to ask if I wanted to do that in another room. Hmmm.... let's see, go into another room, disrobe then walk out in front of people with no top on to lie down on a table or just whip my top off and lie down. Great choice, I chose to just do it there. Once lying on the bed/table I had to put both arms up over my head. This seems like an easy task but believe me it took a lot of time and effort not only on my part but the nurses. The idea is to put your arms up over your head and then the bed/table/mortuary slab will move and slide you through a 'big' donut which takes scans of the affected area. Unfortunately the arm where I had the axillary clearance didn't have a great deal of movement and after much grimacing I managed to get that arm up and hang on to a handle that was there for people who had difficulty. Of course no problem with my right arm until they tried to move me through the donut. Now I am large but not that large. Surely a hospital that does these kinds of tests every day, a hospital that specialises in cancer and has many breast cancer patients filing through it each day would have a machine that you could fit through with your arms over your head if that is what they needed. After much rearranging of arms and pushing and shoving and two people I have never met before discussing how to fit me in they decided that I didn't need to have that arm up and I could lay it by my side with my hand resting comfortable on my tummy...... phew. Bear in mind that all this was going on whilst I was naked. I have no idea what they would have done had I had a bilateral mastectomy.
Now the fun starts. The door opens and yet another stranger walks in, this time the radio oncologist. He pulls out a texta and starts to draw all over my chest, both sides. Interesting, just lie here Judy and try not to think about it. I think it took him all of two minutes to totally cover my chest in blue lines. He then leaves the room and the nurses get busy again. They start calling out co-ordinates to each other and recording them so that when I get zapped I am lined up exactly the same way every time. A piece of paper is put over my chest and one of the nurses gets to trace all the markings. Not much longer now I am told and I can rest my arm, I just have to have my tattoo! I was expecting a tattoo but not three of them. I was told it would sting a little so I braced myself. The first two I couldn't feel as they were under my arm towards my back where I was still numb from the operation. The third one however did sting a bit and I remember saying ouch and thinking that if that one little dot hurt that much there was no way I would ever be getting a tattoo. I am such a sooky sooky lala. I was then allowed to leave the hospital sporting my nice new permanent blackhead right in the middle of my cleavage, well where there is going to be a cleavage again one day hopefully.
Two weeks later the day before I start radiotherapy I get a phone call at work from the radio oncologist. I really hate getting unexpected calls from my specialists, they always make me panic. He said nothing to worry about but apparently I have what is known as a butterfly heart. Sounds pretty doesn't it but what it means is that my heart sits up higher than normal. I never knew this and wonder now whether this is why I am often told I have a heart murmur, is my heart closer to the stethoscope and therefore easier to hear? Maybe. Anyway, because of this not only will the radiotherapy affect part of my lungs but it will touch on my heart, something that I was told would not happen. This is nothing to worry about but he had to tell me that because of this I am at a high risk of having heart disease in about ten years. Great, just add it to the list of everything else that I am now at a high risk of due to treatment. I figured that if having this radiotherapy helped me live another ten years to get heart disease then it was worth doing. I was told that I need to keep my BMI at a healthy level. ???? Hmmm.... I'd need to get it there first to keep it there! Oh well.
The next day saw me going back to the hospital for my first treatment. I didn't really know what to expect but wasn't overly concerned as so many people had told me that it didn't hurt and it was over very quickly. I walked through the front doors wondering how soon I would get sick of doing this. I had to go every week day for six weeks but luckily they gave me a schedule that meant I could go on my way in to work each day. It actually meant that I could have a bit of a sleep in which was greatly needed at this point. I walked past the reception desk and chemo ward mentally giving it the finger. Much as the staff in there were lovely I was so glad to never have to go back there. Onwards through the radiotherapy doors to their reception and on to the next phase of my treatment.
All I can say for the radiotherapy department is that it is run sooooooooo very smoothly. The staff were all amazing and I felt at home very quickly. I was given my own robe which I would use exclusively for all my treatment and my own locker to put it in. Each morning I was to go to reception, say my name and birthdate and then sit and wait. I never had to wait long. They would then call my name and I would go through the next set of doors, get my robe from my locker and go to the changing rooms. I had to grab a basket similar to a shopping basket and put my bag and clothes in there and once I had the robe on I sat at the next waiting room. Once again not a long wait and then I moved on through a big lead lined door and into a large room with a slab in the middle and a great big machine behind it. It was all very interesting. After sliding the robe off my left side (they were a lot more discreet in here) I lay down on the slab with my head resting on an uncomfortable hard 'pillow'. I put my left arm up over my head and hung on to the handle and rested my right hand on my tummy. Two 'nurses' then positioned me in exactly the same way as during my planning session. The lights were turned off and they used a red laser beam to line me up with the three tattoos. One nurse read out the co-ordinate and the other made the machine move to line me up. To help with that last little bit of lining up one nurse grabbed the sheet I was lying on and moved me, how embarrassing, but I wasn't allowed to help her, I had to lie still. After they got me in the position they wanted they placed a heavy blanket of rubber over my chest. This apparently 'fools' the machine into thinking that I had a layer of breast so that I get zapped in the right spot. Finally I was all set up. The machine was moved back to the wall behind me, I was told that they were leaving the room but would be able to see me on the monitor and to just lie very very still. I lay very still looking at the ceiling which was made out of thin wooden slats. I wondered if there was a reason for that or was it just a nice effect. Suddenly the machine started whirring and it automatically moved up and over me from the left. It clicked into place and whirred, moved, clicked, whirred, moved, clicked and then whirred a final time for exactly 15 seconds. It then moved back to its starting point and the nurses returned to tell me that I could leave. I got to know exactly how many clicks there would be and exactly when I would hear the nurse call out "we're back." Back to the changing room I went where I slathered myself with solugel cream as I had been told that if you do that you won't get a bad reaction. I waved goodbye and went on to work feeling good about it all, this was treatment I could easily handle. One down, 29 to go.
