August 2012. So I finally started chemotherapy (third time round) dead set against it. I was quite honestly so terrified that when I wobbled into the chemotherapy ward I was shaking all over. I don't know if other people are equally scared, maybe some, and maybe others go through this experience unscathed from start to finish. I know I tend to think too deeply about most things, and I know I am a highly sensitive person and I'm deeply affected by any dramatic event. But here's a firm conviction I have. We are who we are, we can't be anything else, so there is no right or wrong way to react or to be. That's just people being judgemental. We ALL do the best we can. Neither does anybody have the right to tell you how to be, especially if they haven't faced the same thing. We all react very differently in these life-threatening situations, some people space out to cope with what's happening, some people break down, some people take it all in their stride, some people don't seem to be aware of what's going on ... there must be endless variations on the theme. To give an example, I had the beginnings of cancer of the cervix at the age of 30 and it was in all honesty an absolute breeze. I was so unaware of what was going on, I don't think it even registered that the cell changes could be the beginning of cancer. I had the operation, didn't feel a thing and carried on with life oblivious to the seriousness of what I had been through.
Well, this time round, older, hopefully wiser, infinitely more aware, I went to the other end of the spectrum. Acutely conscious of the implications, every muscle in my body was tense, every sense on overdrive, my mind (or soul?) insisting it was a bad idea. What I wanted, what anybody wants, is to treat the tumour and leave the rest of the body alone. If only modern western medicine provided that. No doubt it will one day.
First there was an interview with the staff nurse who explained the whole procedure. Then I had an angel of a nurse to administer the chemotherapy. The room was really very pleasant - modern and spacious, only 4 patients to a room in reclinable chairs that were designed by the gods! The needle didn't hurt at all the first time, which would not be the case in subsequent sessions, bless the nurse. But given the emotional state I was in (and how few toxins I had in my body) I was acutely sensitive to the effects of the drug. I felt it affect my ovaries instantly, which freaked me out because all along my greatest objection to chemotherapy was that it would interrupt my period and I would not be able to have children. Then to feel the drug go in and around your body (when your head is still calling it a poison) was no less than sinister.
All in all, the session lasted a couple of hours, I felt drugged and shocked but it was over. Back at home the only thing for it was to go to bed. Believe me it is SO hard to describe the sensations, unlike anything you normally experience. You feel drugged, spaced-out, almost giddy, all senses and bodily systems altered in strange ways. Somebody asked me if it's like having flu (bar the mucus and the aching muscles) but it's not like that. It's indescribably weird in an unpleasant way.
Writing now from the perspective of having had 11 sessions, I can say that I just don't get it - how each session could go so differently, how the side effects could vary tremendously from one week to the next, and how, try as I might, I can't for the life of me detect a pattern in any of it! Sometimes a session would knock me out and I would be drugged and barely able to walk out of the hospital without assistance. Other times it would bring on sleep. And sometimes I'd be wide-awake and almost skip out of the place on finishing and drive myself home on a scooter. It made no sense whatsoever, but it's what happened.
And then there are the side effects to talk about ...
