LFG BQ

Somehow, today is day *one hundred* since I finished chemotherapy and rang the bell. One hundred days. How on earth did we get here?  Never has anything felt simultaneously like yesterday and like five years ago.  So with that being said, getting to +100 days is something that I'm struggling to get my head around a little bit. I'm sure I'll get to it eventually, but the whole experience is already beginning to feel like a bad dream. There are genuinely some occasions when it dawns on me that I actually had cancer.  Oh yeh, that was fun. As I am sure the many long time readers (is 'fans' too egotistical a term at this juncture?) of this blog will have clocked, I haven't written anything for ages! Not since the immediate few days after my last round of chemo actually. Now, this sabbatical could be down to two things. It could be because 1) I can actually sleep now and no longer have time to kill between 3 and 5am most nights. So that's a big win. Or it could...

Where to start? Chemo is over.  What a thing to be able to say. My first chemo session was on Wednesday 13th October. That both feels like the mere blink of an eye and a complete lifetime ago. Today is day 155. Five months and five days. My rough estimation is 800x tablets so far.  I've had a 42cm line in my arm pumping litre after litre of chemicals direct in to my chest turning my pee red within minutes, making me feel like a zombie and destroying my taste and stomach for days. I've gone from being fairly utterly riddled with bad, most terrifying shit in my neck and chest to being told I'm in complete metabolic remission. Clear.  It has been one hell of a ride.  It's something that I don't think I will ever truly be able to communicate properly, but the masses (ha!) are expecting a grand, last chemo blog so I'm going to give it a good go! Before we get to the final week, I had some fun with the final District Nurse visit last week. Now, I've had 11 visits...

At the very start of treatment, my biggest fear was *looking* like a chemotherapy patient. Of course, there is no shame in looking like that, it’s a borderline badge of honour for your body in fronting up to the poison that is being pumped around your body… but mannn, I really didn’t want to look like a chemo patient. So now, 141 days since the barrage of ABVD first began winging its way around my body, I look pretty chemo-y. Subconsciously, I’m doing my best to avoid mirrors. I sometimes manage it only brushing my teeth at the bookends of the day, giving myself a pat on the back in the process. But saying that, between those visits to the bathroom, I’m exclusively in two rooms - the kitchen/office and the lounge so it’s no great shakes. Although Teams is a pain, but somehow the light and angle can do me a favour - or I just pull my hat down and pop my collar up! (I won’t be one of those no camera dweebs though, even with chemoface). We took a photo of my hair the other day to record ...

'Only three rounds left? Ah, you'll be fine mate!'  That’s something I’ve heard a few times lately. I get it, it’s been a long period of time for everyone, and I think there’s definitely an element of cancer fatigue - not just for me but for everyone around me. I’ve said before, it’s all encompassing. And I guess we could consider me to be as close to ‘fine’ now as I have been for while.  But with that said, it’s all relative. 18 months ago I was about as ‘fine’ as I could be. New house, settled job, happy relationship, fit and healthy. Now ‘fine’ consists of only having two rounds of chemo to go, only having 26 days until I can hopefully get the 38cm line removed from my chest and not waking up every  night in the two week cycle needing the toilet like I’m in my 70’s.  (Sometimes I get up three or four times a night and I simply do not understand how or why! It's not like I'm drinking a pint between each piss). The reality is despite being in remission and, in ef...

Guess who's back? 5am blog club! And this one is a special one... Today marks 100 days since I started chemotherapy. It feels simultaneously like the click of my fingers and 1000 days ago that I walked in to the Combined Day Unit having absolutely no idea what to expect; the instantaneous taste in my mouth, the red wee from one of the drugs (only for a few hours, don’t worry!), feeling like a zombie extra from the Walking Dead for 48 hours and the now infamous 4am steroid club of course. It has and continues to be a ride! My hair has stabilised but my eyebrows are gradually (quickly!) disappearing which is an odd experience. My facial hair is even more patchy than usual - blonde on my face, dark and much thicker on my neck. Bizarre. I feel tired and drawn out but the light at the end of the tunnel gets that bit bigger each day. 100 days means eight rounds are ticked off leaving only four to go. That in itself is quite the thing to get my head round. But the countdown is truly on - ...

It’s 5am, round 7 was yesterday. That can only mean one thing… it’s a steroid-powered blog baby! I’ve been thinking about what to write and I’m going to try and keep the update to how I’m doing to a minimum. I’m doing ok, it’s more of the same and I’m progressively more tired. But we’re 7 rounds in now, which means we have truly broken the back of this beast with only (ONLY! Ha) 5 rounds to go.  Round 6 was just before Christmas and I did a deal with the devil to get me to and through the big day relatively ok, which I then paid for with a good 5-6 days of pure misery evoked by hellacious stomach cramps. I spoke to the consultant earlier in the week who said the Vinblastine element of the AVD cocktail can play havoc with the nerve endings in your bowel. WONDERFUL. Thanks for the warning pal. In any case, I’ve been prescribed some heavy duty Buscopan to counter it when it lands this time round.  *It is worth noting I did have A LOT of turkey over the festive period, but I’m gon...

I think this is the biggest gap between blogs so far and being totally honest, I haven't really known what to write. I've had a very surreal few weeks.  I've spent most of it utterly convinced the doctors showed me the wrong scan results. It must have been someone else right? I'd only had four treatments before the scan, how could it possibly have vanquished the cancer that quickly?  From the minute you get diagnosed, everything (and I mean everything ) becomes about cancer. We spend our lives being told on those difficult adverts which we don't really watch because we either find it too hard or just refuse to accept the fact that one in two of us will get it. But unless you know someone who has been through it before, you know nothing about it. I certainly didn't. It is all consuming. Your treatment, what it does to your body (and hair!), what foods you can't eat, what things you can't do. Never mind the big question; can I beat it? Will I get better?...

It is crazy what the mind does when it is left up to its own devices. I was up late reading a book the other night and a character dies. Nothing to do with cancer, he got shot on a Ferris wheel and fell to the ground (Stephen King deaths lol), but one thing led to another and he was cremated. Now, throughout this nonsense, not once have I entertained death. There is literally no reason to - from the first meeting with Dr Lala, she stressed we weren't fighting against the clock. It wasn't something that could spread to elsewhere in the body (which blew my mind as you'd think the absolute opposite for cancer of the blood!). But that night my mind was overcome with what if this, and what if that.  What if I was one of the tiny percentile who were really unlucky?  What if it had spread somewhere and this wasn't a case of dealing with just Lymphoma but dealing with lung or brain cancer?  You have to remember, all my brain can think about is that Lymphoma is a cancer of the...