Wishing you all a Blazingly Good New Year…

Day 22
 

General status update

Hair: Panic-stricken about FEC 2 and trying to retract itself into its follicles, but I think that only works with testicles

Nausea demon: Seems to be arranging some kind of New Year’s Eve party with the

Chemo Muse, who is busy trying on, and then discarding on the floor, numerous party outfits. If she doesn’t put them all back on the hangers, then there is going to be trouble.

Sleep, lack of: Currently acute - I went to bed at 3.50 am this morning, and was up at 8.

Anxiety level (1-10): Rocketing, but I’ll tell you why tomorrow.

State of mind: See Anxiety, above.

 

 

 

 

New Year’s Eve at the oncology clinic turns out to be much like any other day: although there is still some festive tinsel around, the holiday lull seems to be over and the room is, as usual, full of bald men, and women wearing headscarves, or knitted woolly hats – no wigs in evidence.

When I am called in to see Stan, he greets me cordially, comments on how well I am looking, and asks how things have been since he came to my rescue during the Great Nausea Meds Crisis on day 7 of my first chemo cycle, 2 weeks ago.

‘PerfectlyfineMyonlymajorsideeffectssofararethenauseaandsleeplessnessandthewhole
hyperactivitythingdoyourememberyoutoldmeI’dbesurprisedbyjusthowmuchIcoulddo
whileIwashavingchemo,well,youwereabsolutelyrightandI’vebeenworkingamazinglyhard
onawritingprojectI’vewrittenmorethan20thousandwordsnowandI’vealsoraisedabout450
quidforTheHavensofarbygettingpeopletosponsormychemoandIhopetoraisealotmorebytheend..’

I am forced to pause for breath, but before I can continue gabbling Stan lifts his hand and says ‘Hang on a minute. Did you just say you were getting people to sponsor your chemo?’

‘Yes!’ I beam at him, ‘I think it may quite possibly be the world’s first ever sponsored course of chemo.’

‘I think you are very probably right there’ says Stan, slowly.

Then he smiles at me ‘Caroline, I’m proud of you for making something positive out of this – I know how terrified you were of having chemo’.

I manage not to burst into tears, but it’s a close-run thing.

Stan, of course, has absolutely no idea that he has been co-starring in this blog for the last 3 weeks (along with Hank the Hungarian Visla – it’s a close call as to which of them has the most fans), nor that several women have already indicated to me that when they get cancer, they definitely want Stan to be their oncologist. I decided not to mention any of that – we wouldn’t want him getting big-headed, or anything.

Today’s YouTube clip is a special New Year’s Song by the wonderful Northumbrian folk singers the Unthanks; it accompanies pictures of a traditional north of England New Year’s Eve ceremony, the Allendale Tar Barrel Procession, another fiery event of (possibly spurious) Viking origin.

 This song is dedicated to @fionalaird by way of apology for her Hamster Viking Funeral-related distress. Look, Fiona - lots of flames, and NO dead hamsters!

 

 

Happy New Year!

Sleepless in Hammersmith

Day 15
 

General status update

Hair: Seems to be falling out less than usual, if anything. Am beginning to wonder if the follicles are still in shock from the chemo; perhaps when they finally wake up, the whole lot will just all fall out at once. This is pretty much what happened to one of my virtual ‘Starting Chemo in December’ Buddies, who started a week before me – she was devastated. She didn’t do the cold cap, though.

Nausea demon: Still doing his stuff – If I slip up and leave too long between doses of the anti-emetic drugs, he’s like a cat waiting to pounce.

Chemo Muse: she defeated sleep almost entirely for 2 weeks, but now sleep is starting to fight back.

Sleep, lack of: Now chronically sleep-deprived, and not functioning very well, after several nights of going to bed at 3 or 4 am – this is going to be remedied tonight by a dose of Lorazepam, Morpheus’s chosen pharmaceutical. Unfortunately, this will mean a very groggy Christmas Day, but it can’t be helped: I MUST get some sleep.

Anxiety level (1-10): too tired to be anxious, but if I weren’t I’d be very anxious about being so tired.

State of mind: I just want to lie down in my Hobbit-hole and go to sleep for a very, very long time.

 

Since I started this blog on the day before my first dose of chemo two weeks ago, I have published a post every day, and written some 15,000 words, including this post, which is half as long again as my MSc dissertation; at this rate, by the time I finish chemo the total word count will approximate that of a D.Phil thesis.  The blog has now had about 4,500 hits, and has readers in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, Spain, France, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, India, South Africa and the Cayman Islands, as well as the UK.

 

 It’s been a busy couple of weeks, no?

There is no such a thing as a free lunch, and the downside of the manic mental energy I have been experiencing over the last 2 weeks is an inability to sleep; after many wakeful nights I am so exhausted that it is quite hard right at this minute to focus my mind long enough to write coherent sentences.  Today has been a sofa day, pretty much, but I have been too tired even to read. So a proper blog post is not really on the cards and besides, I have been ordered by the powers that be to get some rest before I collapse completely.

I have 7 days left before I go back to the hospital for the next dose of the chemo - or FEC 2, as it's known in the trade - and then they'll be giving me more steroids, and the whole thing hyperactivity will start all over again. I MUST get some rest, slow down and become more functional before we have to start the chemo cycle all over again.

 

So in a minute I’m going to go and lie down, but I’ll leave you with a interesting historical artefact from the Fo photographic archive:

 

 

This one was not posed by a model; the girl on the left is - or was, once upon a time - actually me.

 

It's hard now to believe that I was ever that young...
 

We made it to the quarter finals of University Challenge and yes, Bamber Gascoigne was delightful.