There's a (happy) place in the sun....

Day 21 

General status update

Hair: The suspense is killing both me and Hair. Am tempted just to shave it all off, so I can stop waiting for it to start falling like autumn leaves. Hair, unsurprisingly, not overly impressed by this idea and determined to fend off the ravages of FEC 2 in the spirit of the Siege of Leningrad. Have nasty feeling that particular event ended up with everyone eating rats. And worse. Still, I could get Big Sis Fo to send some down from north Yorkshire, where there are plenty going spare.

Nausea demon: Pumped. There’s no other word for it. B*ST*RD.

Chemo Muse: Off out having her hair highlighted so she can look her best for Chemo Cycle 2. Of course her hair isn’t going to be falling out, is it? B*TCH.

Sleep, lack of: Pill last night, so no pill tonight. Oh Morpheus, gentle deity, please take me in your arms  tonight - PLEASE.

Anxiety level (1-10): The rapid, high-pitched whine of anxiety in my head has broken through the sound barrier, exited the Earth’s atmosphere, and is now heading towards Mars.

State of mind: No longer incubating escape plans, as I still was 3 weeks ago before FEC 1. Now resigned to being totally FECKED, in 6 instalments.

News from North Yorkshire: Hank keeps backing up into corners whenever the MC approaches. That is now one very nervous dog.

 

The second cycle of chemo - when the next dose of powerful toxins will be pumped into my bloodstream and, perhaps, bring about the rapid loss of my hair - will begin on Wednesday, and I seem to be becoming more than a little tense. Tomorrow morning I will be off to the hospital to see my oncologist again, to discuss how the first cycle went, decide whether the various meds to deal with the side effects need to be adjusted and, most importantly, go through the pre-chemo blood test, carried out to check that your now-compromised immune system has recovered sufficiently after the last dose of chemo for you to survive the next one.  

If the platelet count in your blood is too low, then they won’t let you have any more chemo until it has recovered sufficiently – otherwise the next dose might result in you becoming very seriously ill, or even dying. In order for the chemo drugs to be strong enough to kill off the reproducing cancer cells (chemo kills cells which are reproducing, mostly), they also have to be strong enough to kill the healthily reproducing blood cells which keep the immune system working. If too many are killed, the patient is at very high risk from any infection, however small, especially during days 7-10 of each chemo cycle, when the chemo has had time to do its work, and your immune system is at weakest, and has yet to start fighting back.  

A couple of my on-line friends have been re-hospitalised with infections already, and so I am being insanely vigilant about staying away from crowded places and public transport, washing my hands constantly, and insisting that anyone who enters the flat washes theirs before doing anything else - which can come across as quite rude, unfortunately. It’s hard to get across politely to a dear friend that you don’t want to hug them until they’ve washed their hands, but we live on the fourth floor, and visitors must touch the brass door handles to open and close the (old-fashioned, manual) lift doors, handles that are touched by hundreds of people each day; at the moment some of those hands may well be infected with the highly contagious Norovirus, currently laying waste to the London population, which can live for six months on hard surfaces… and the Norovirus would, at best , put me in an isolation ward for a couple of weeks. At best.  

I seem to have got through the first cycle of FEC relatively unscathed, apart from the constant nausea, sleeplessness and hyperactivity, the dry and sore skin and greatly magnified sense of smell; unlike some of my virtual chemo buddies, I have not yet  experienced any hair loss, mouth ulcers, thrush, cystitis, constipation, diarrhoea, indigestion, sore eyes, black nails, major fatigue or life-threatening infections.

It’s early days yet, of course, and not every patient gets ALL of these side effects. I know it will get worse, but it’s not clear yet if the side effects I already have will get worse, or if additional ones will start appearing – maybe it could be both. I’m most anxious about my hair – it’s been so good this cycle, after having the cold cap, just sitting there quietly on my head, and not falling out. Over the next few weeks, however, after FEC 2, it will almost certainly begin to fall out – if I’m lucky, and the cold cap continues to work, it will just start gradually becoming thinner; if I’m unlucky, the whole lot will go, quite fast.

Fingers crossed eh?

In the mean-time, am working on reducing the anxiety in 2 ways: first, obvs, through the use of weapons-grade pharmaceuticals and second, by doing a runner to my Happy Place in my head, even if I can’t do it in reality. I don’t know why I kept threatening to run away to Goa, in the early stages of denial, anger and rebellion after my diagnosis, because the Camel Barn and its environs, not Goa, is my Happy Place, and evoking and concentrating on images of Ayvalik can always calm me down and make me forget, at least for a little while, the many unpleasant things that are happening to me.

A couple of years ago I kept an on-line photographic diary for a while, on which I put  photos from my long walks in the hills around Ayvalik. I'm not much of a photographer, as will be evident, but I spent nearly 4 years pointing and clicking with my mobile phone at every beautiful view, and it is a place that abounds in beautiful views, both natural and architectural.

 

Below are three entries from that diary, about Ayvalik sunsets; the accompanying images are some of those I use to absent myself, temporarily, to my Happy Place in the sun when the unrelenting barrage of nastiness from this cancer and chemo business is just All Too F***ing Much…

 

  

Friday 23 April 2010: Another Ayvalik sunset...

 

 

'Coming back home again after 3 weeks travelling in south-eastern Turkey has made me look at both Ayvalik, and my house, with renewed appreciation. 

I took my dog up the hill early yesterday evening for his walk in the pine woods, and was welcomed back by a truly spectacular sunset over the Aegean. It reminded me how very lucky I am to have such extraordinary natural beauty there to enjoy freely every day, only a few minutes’ walk up the hill from my house in the town.'

 

Friday 30 April 2010: Why I can't leave Ayvalik...

 

The view, the light, the sense of calm that fills me every day when I walk up into the pine woods and look out over the Aegean. Even though I've photographed it a hundred times before, and posted it on here several times already, I can never get enough of this view.

 Wednesday 26 May 2010: Reaching new heights

 

‘Over the last few weeks I have been going on longer and longer walks every evening with my dog Freddie, gradually exploring and mentally mapping all the different tracks (they're fire roads, I think) that run through the pine woods on the hills behind & beyond Ayvalik. This is a labour of love: these woods, and these walks, are quite beautiful and I want to get to know them thoroughly both for my own benefit, & so I can show them to visitors. Very few people, other than beekeepers, ever go there - as a nation, Turks are not keen on recreational walking - so usually Freddie & I have miles of woods entirely to ourselves. 

Today was the longest and most beautiful walk yet. We were out for nearly 4 hours, and climbed to the highest point in the hills, from where there is a quite breath-taking view over the Ayvalik archipelago & across the Aegean to Lesbos. Freddie & I were very tired when we got to the top of the hill, so we sat in the grass to rest, & breathed in the scent of the pines & wild lavender as we watched the sun start to set over the Aegean..’

 

When times are bad, and I’m feeling sad, Ayvalik is my (happy) place in the sun.

Take it away, Stevie!