Chemo #2

Time is slipping through my fingers. I've been in here for two weeks. It's been a crash course in cancer...in all its extremes.

I finally found myself in a private room after a rather distressing weekend.

I had to endure watching room mates, women I'd gotten to know, being treated for hours by the intensive care team to get them stabilised. Heart rates, fevers, blood pressure and breathing all out of control. None of them could move or feed themselves and I was watching them wasting away to a shadow. Two of the women had bowel cancer and were severely incontinent which made the room unbearable to be in. The lady beside me had internal bleeding and a perforated bowel, she went for surgery and didn't come back. I was the only relatively healthy patient in the room and it felt like a suffocatingly toxic place to be. So I slept on a couch in the patient lounge Saturday & Sunday nights and walked the hallways as much as I could to escape it. Emotionally it was incredibly hard.

I am immensely grateful that my Social Worker and Breast Care Nurse both popped in on Monday morning and I was able to tell them how I was feeling. I was honest and said that I would prefer to go home then stay in such a distressing & toxic environment. I knew that I wouldn't be able to cope with the smells and stress during my next chemo. So they kindly arranged a single room for me and it has made a world of difference.

My surgeon and oncologist came to see me later that day and gave me the all clear to start chemo on Tuesday.

Tuesday morning I had a bone scan over at Nuclear Imaging and then had chemo back in my room later that afternoon. Thanks to a sleeping pill I slept surprisingly well that night, only waking a couple of times with nausea. Wednesday was a haze of sleeping pills & anti-emetics, vomiting and nausea. Thursday & Friday were the same. I felt completely wiped out. My oncology team came by & discussed my options. Looks like we'll be changing my treatment from TAC to just TC. The middle drug is just too toxic for my system. They don't think I'll be out of here till next Tuesday. Goodbye Easter Weekend then.

Am feeling so exhausted and emotionally weak. I miss my babies, I miss my husband and I miss my home & friends. Am feeling a massive amount of guilt for putting my family through so much stress. I know it's not my fault but it hurts to see my boys struggle. Especially Harry, he's not coping well.

I would love nothing more than for this whole horrible nightmare to go away.

 

Posted with Blogsy