An unexpected truth

Day 79  

General status update

Stomach: complaining bitterly about the indignities heaped upon it for the last 10 weeks, and demanding to go into a Witness Protection Programme. It’s had enough.

Nausea demon: still doing horrible things to my stomach. He never gives up.

Chemo Muse: She’s met her match in the Despair Demon, and she doesn’t like him taking over her patch one little bit. Am hoping she will mount some kind of counter-attack, because I need help, badly.

Despair Demon: He’s ruling the roost, right now. King of all he surveys – as far as the inside of my head goes, anyway

Chemo Brian: We spent the morning together on the sofa, but even he can’t comfort me right now

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Fatigue/weakness: it’s going to get worse before it gets better, probably starting tomorrow, day 7.

Anxiety level (1-10): On the plus side, I’m not Nick Clegg, and my prognosis is probably better than his, too.

State of mind: Wondering if I could find a vet to put me down. It would be the kindest thing.

It’s day 6 of FEC 4, and I am realising that I have completely underestimated the poisonous power of chemo, as have all those people cheering me on who have not experienced it themselves. At the beginning R said it would be like marathon training – hard work, unpleasant, but for a specific purpose and, most importantly, time-limited. It would be horrible, but it would come to an end, and the finishing line would always be in sight, and the closer you got to the goal, the easier it would be to continue, spurred on by your nearness to success.

I took comfort from that idea, at the beginning, but have now come face to face with an unexpected truth: the experience of chemo is nothing like that at all.

With marathon training, you get fitter, you’re able to run further, demand more of your body, achieve things previously unthought of.  With chemo you become progressively more poisoned, weaker, more and more psychologically crushed and, as the weeks slowly pass, you dread each new dose of chemo more and more viscerally.

When I got to FEC3, half-way, that should have been a big psychological turning point: Half way! Yay! On the downward slope!

But it wasn’t like that at all. There was no sense of achievement; rather, I was filled with horror that having gone through this physical and mental torture 3 times already, I was now going to have to do it ALL OVER AGAIN. Similarly, now I’ve ‘done’ FEC4 (although I’m still in the middle of the side effects),  and there are ‘only’ 2 more doses of chemo to go, there is no sense of relief, just grim despair at what still lies in front of me: it’s as if I’ve already climbed the Eiger, the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau, only to find that Everest and K2 are still sitting there waiting for me, their jagged peaks wreathed in clouds of mist and snow.

It gets harder every time, not easier, and that’s an unexpected and very unwelcome truth. You become extraordinarily tired, mentally and physically, by going through the process of chemotherapy treatment. For the first 3 cycles of chemo, the first 9 weeks, I managed to keep going: there were a few very bad days each cycle, but I managed to keep on writing coherent blog-posts, more or less, getting dressed and going out each day, keeping the house going. I stayed mentally alert, and I could see the way forward.

Now, all I long for is sweet oblivion: another 8 weeks of this seems like a life sentence. I’m tired, so tired, and I just want to stop. To ‘cease upon the midnight with no pain’ seems like an extraordinarily attractive option, if only it were available. 

I am weary to my bones, and I am weary in my soul.

I know I’m going through the worst part of the cycle now, and I’ll have more energy again in a few days, and more hope, but right now the whole chemo enterprise seems like climbing up a mountain on my hands and knees: unbearably slow, and unbearably painful, and far more effort than it’s worth.

People are trying to cheer me up, and urge me on and R, as ever, is a tower of strength, but I’m just so weak now, in mind and body. Right now, the chemo has won.

It’s taken the life right out of me.

FEC - 1, Fo - 0