Don't leave me hanging on the telephone...

Day 7

General status update

Nausea: see below

Hair: no change

Fingertips: numb

Anxiety level (1-10): why are you looking at me like that? WHY?

State of mind: stormy, unpredictable, with a few turbulent intervals

 

Today was the day that the Nausea Demon made it clear that he hadn’t just popped in for a brief visit, as had initially been hoped 
 

- for many people the nausea begins to wear off on Day 3, and doesn’t bother them again until the next cycle starts -

 

but had decided to stay indefinitely: he accordingly unpacked his suitcase, hung up his clothes and is, by now, probably looking at fabric swatches to choose the curtain material for his room.

An early start, with a couple of hours’ hard work at the computer, not feeling too bad, had left me hopeful that this was the day the nausea was finally going to abate. I said as much to R as I took him a cup of coffee in bed.

 

BIG MISTAKE

 

Why do we always ruin potentially favourable circumstances by commenting on them, thus awaking the Gods who are deputed to deal with this kind of mortal insolence? It may have been early Sunday morning, but they got on the case straight away, sending someone to rouse the Nausea Demon from his over-lengthy slumbers in a quiet corner of my stomach, where he had clearly slept through his alarm call.

He was, it has to be said, deeply unamused

a) to be woken up from a happy dream of running amok through all the last minute shoppers on Christmas Eve, distributing a little extra magic and sparkle over their heads in the form of the Winter Vomiting Virus, to be activated on Christmas Day, just before lunch time, and

b) to be caught napping by the Powers That Be,

 and expressed his annoyance accordingly.

 

My, how he roared! 

I’ll spare you the details, but at this point it seemed like a good idea to try and get a bit of medical assistance, given that I had only one kind of anti-nausea meds left (they start you off on three different sorts simultaneously) and the remaining tablets, Domperidone, no longer seemed to be working very effectively.

 So, mindful of how many people had told me that 'you don't need to suffer, ask for help whenever you need it!' and ''if you're a chemo patient, they will get you drugs 24/7, if necessary – and DELIVER', I called the Charing Cross Chemo 24 hour emergency number, which I had been instructed to call at any time, if problems arose during chemo treatment, of whatever nature.

 

And it rang and it rang and it rang.

And there was no voice mail.

 Thinking I must have dialled the wrong number, I checked and tried again. After repeated calls, there was still no answer. This was at about 10.30 am this morning.

 R was out, briefly, so I was on my own, and at that point I went into complete meltdown, and started to cry my eyes out.
 

I've managed to hold it together all week since the chemo, pretty much, but this just sent me over the edge, even though it wasn't really a huge emergency, or even an emergency at all. I just felt so, so sick, and so, so helpless, and the people who were meant to be there at the end of the phone, 24 hours a day, WEREN'T.

 

Poor R came back shortly afterwards to find me bawling out what was probably my entire accumulated angst since the diagnosis of breast cancer in September, having left me half an hour before, smiling and perfectly calm. 

 It’s not a lot of fun for the partners of chemo patients (or any other people with serious illnesses, for that matter), as they never know what is going to happen next; this is an issue I will return to later.

 R rose manfully to the occasion and took complete charge: in short order he dried my tears, and comforted me, cuddled me and calmed me down, before trying the Chemo Line a few more times, in vain.

We then gave up trying to talk to the hospital.

It didn't rate an immediate A&E trip, so I gritted my teeth and kept self-medicating by drinking Diet Coke, and licking the salt off plain tortilla chips.  Things improved, very gradually. It also occurred to me this afternoon, rather belatedly, that since there are still quite a few of the Domperidone left, it might help to increase the dose, which for some reason I was regarding as sacrosanct;  I did this, and I’m feeling a bit better now. At this stage in the game, though, I'm so ignorant of the whole chemo process that I'm rather nervous about messing about with dosages without any medical say so.

 

And tomorrow we are going to be having a very serious conversation with the oncology department about adjusting my anti-emetic medication  -  and what the hell is going on with their allegedly 24/7 Chemo Emergency Number.

 

Gotta go, my friends, the Nausea Demon is demanding supper – he needs to be fed regularly, or he gets Very Arsy Indeed.