Chemo newbie

I got the call. Everything was ready for my chemotherapy to start and I needed to get into hospital that day and being a chemo newbie I had to stay in for a few days to be monitored. I’d been building up for this, I knew this was going to happen, but now it was actually happening oh boy was I scared. This whole thing is becoming increasingly real and as much as I try and ignore it my life has changed, it’s terrifying how quickly that has happened. 

So I rock up to the ward and massively felt like the new recruit, with a full face of make up, a cheery smile and far too overdressed for a hospital stay. I was in for a shock. I was put on a cancer ward and I was the youngest in there by 50 years. I’ve never seen the nurses so excited about having to dust off a playstation 4.

I’ve never been around cancer patients, obviously I’ve know cancer patients and have listened to their experiences but it’s not until you walk into the hospital ward, that you see the severity of cancer. I walked into that ward and I was scared, I didn’t think that this would affect me – untouchable remember. Well the ward was full of patients with no hair, attached to drips and oxygen masks. Fuck, was this my life now? Am I to become one of these patients? But what I found out over the course of my stay was that these weren’t just patients, these were incredibly powerful women, amongst the drips and masks were amazing women with incredible lives and who are now inspiring friends. There are so many people out there living through it, cancer has grown such a scary death connotation but it needn’t be, with awareness and action it can be diagnosed early and cured, I wasn’t afforded that luck, but others still can be. 

Child measured dosages

So, the egg ‘fishing” procedure was, well let’s say, eventful. Not only did I have my legs in stirrups, but a room full of people, camera and spotlight all focused on you know what! I think it’s safe to say that I lost my dignity a while back. The entire procedure was made even more enjoyable by having very little pain relief. Whilst I have no experience of childbirth, this certainly provided me with an insight. Shudder.

I sat waiting miserable as sin, to be called in for my surgery. The two weeks of hormone injections had taken its toll, I was not finding the sexy backless gown as funny as usual, even the addition of a bright blue paper hat that gave me the ‘smurfette’ look was not able to amuse me. My sister on the other hand was overly excited as they gowned her up ready to watch the procedure. This decision was soon regretted as once it was all underway she became squeezy and made a mad dash for the door. This unlike the smurf hat had managed to put a smile back on my face and I laughed much to the confusion of the doctors.

To say they didn’t give me any pain relief would be unfair, as I did thoroughly enjoy the side effects of one particular drug, floating on cloud 9, they should sell that shit over the counter! The problem was that it didn’t seem to be enough, it never seems to be enough, it’s because I’m small, they hold back due to my teeny tiny body mass. Listen Doc, I might be skimming just over 5ft but there is no need to give me child measured dosages.

The same thing happened during the biopsy of the alien bastard. Since the bastard had wormed itself right up against my kidney, spine and aorta, it was crucial to lie completely still, really fucking crucial, but being a known fidget, I was feeling the pressure. So I lie there on my tummy with a big ass needle lodged into my back, waiting for that cloud 9 feeling to kick in, but it never came. I didn’t want to make a fuss, so by the time the pain got really unbearable we were too far into the surgery to not complete the biopsy. We needed to know what was growing inside of me, and asap, so that big ass needle carried on going further and further into my back. It was like they were digging for gold, it took everything I had to not shout every obscenity under the sun, which I often do in this blog. The pain reached a point where I was either going to throw up or pass out, thankfully for those around me, I went with the latter. I was grateful for this, as puke in my hair was something that’s only mildly acceptable the morning after, the night before. Classy. The surgery was a success and they managed to cut away a sample of the bastard. I like to think that they carved out its eye, so now we’ll call it the one eyed bastard. I, however, was awarded the gold star for the bravest patient. Cue smug face.

Anyway, where were we?! Ah yes, egg fishing! After relentless ‘poking’ they removed 10 mature (something I’ve never been) eggs. The surgeon attempted to stop half way through, as it reached a point whereby we passed uncomfortable and landed at really fucking painful. I had other ideas, I wasn’t prepared to leave an egg behind, I’d gone this far, so I digged deep and we finished up with 10 frozen eggs. Just think 10 crazy Charlotte minions. I intend to use every one of them for world domination.

The baby bait

I’ve never actually sat down and thought about having children, maybe because i’m not in a long term relationship, maybe because i’m enjoying dating, maybe because I spend my weekends sitting in pub gardens drinking pints with friends, maybe because I love travelling, maybe because I’m putting all of my focus into starting up a business. I’m just 27, I like those maybes. I have plenty of time before I tackle nappies and midnight feeds, right? Well wrong, i’m in cancer world now remember, chemotherapy significantly reduces or may even take away my chance of having a baby. So now this wasn’t a maybe moment, do I delay treatment and get my eggs frozen, or do a steam ahead with treatment and rid myself of this cancer that is taking hold of my body? My consultant, who is amazing, is concerned with my long term plan and wants me to have the choice of having children. After two years of misdiagnosis, what’s an extra two weeks of fertility treatment going to do. Even though children wasn’t in my immediate plans, having that choice cruelly taken away from me isn’t fair. Its my choice, not cancers, the interfering bastard.

So off to Kings College London I go for two weeks of treatment. The basic idea is to cram my ovaries with hormones and stimulate the growth of the follicles and once I have enough, the surgeons will go in, or up, with a fishing rod and see how many of the blighters they can catch. I joke, it involves a very long needle and piercing of some very sensitive skin, but that doesn’t sound very friendly and makes me feel queasy so lets just pretend I’ll have a surgeon sitting there with a bright yellow fisherman’s hat on, a fishing rod and baby bait.

The two week treatment involves injecting myself (yes myself, ahhh!) two times a night, one needle to spur on those hormones and the other to stop me ovulating until my follicles were big enough – i’d have regular scans to monitor the growth. The first night of injections was chaos, firstly because I couldn’t for the life of me remember what the nurse had told me to do with the medication, how to put together a needle and more importantly how and where to bloody inject the thing. Secondly because I couldn’t stop freaking out about this massive needle I’m having to pierce into my body! But finally, after watching a youtube video explaining the procedure I have the needle prepped and ready in one hand, glass of red in the other, some woman’s monotone voice on the youtube clip in the background. God knows what my housemates would have thought if they’d walked in on this!

Sometime later…

Right so trying to inject with one hand is near on impossible, so I had to shot that glass of wine, pour another, shot that, and with not so steady hands and having repeatedly shouted at myself to ‘just fucking do it already’ – again my poor housemates, I did it, hip bloody hooray, and ahhh relief, and you know it wasn’t as bad as I thought, all that arsing around was ridiculous. But I am now aware that after two weeks of injections, I will look like a pin cushion and with the amount of needles I have stashed in my room I will look like an addict with a serious drug problem but sod it, it’s giving me that chance to have children. And having spoken to or read about other peoples cancer experiences it is clear that many of them couldn’t have the option of fertility treatment because of their type or stage of cancer and I keep thinking how heartbreaking that must be for them, so right now I count myself very lucky. Very lucky indeed. 

Know your body

The weeks following finding out I had this bastard mass growing inside of me, was a blur of blood tests, biopsies, radioactive PET scans (yes I did pretend for the afternoon I was hulk and repeatedly sang Imagine Dragons). We knew I had cancer, we just didn’t know what kind. We didn’t know how advanced it was, my prognosis or my treatment if any. My consultant said he hoped for lymphoma, that, he said, he could treat. Such a surreal situation to be in, to hope I have a type of cancer. I used to hope i’d win the lottery and I’m now finding myself hoping for lymphoma. Brilliant.

Let the scans begin..

Finding a hobbit sized gown is near impossible

And Lymphoma it was to be. Non-Hodgkins Follicular Lymphoma to be exact, a disease that affects the over 60’s. So I’m the height of a 12 year old fighting a 60 year old’s disease. Super.

Oh and it’s been growing for two years. Two years of misdiagnosis. And because it was misdiagnosed for so long it had been given the time to spread, so not only did I have a big bastard mass in my abdomen but a rather large and unsightly one on my neck too. Such luck. I knew my body wasn’t right, I knew I had something that shouldn’t be there. Am I cross at the various doctors I saw? Hell yes I am. I’m cross that my age determined their diagnosis of me. This is why it is so important that we are aware of our bodies, if you feel something’s not right or you don’t agree with a doctors diagnosis, then you get that 2nd and 3rd opinion. I knew my body wasn’t right two years ago, I should have gone with my instinct, I should have persevered.

The alien

I’d been having stomach trouble for a while. It was about 2 years ago that I had an ultrasound on my abdomen, it showed a 2cm cyst around my liver, the doctor wasn’t concerned, so I wasn’t concerned, they would monitor it with three monthly scans. But they didn’t. So after months and months of hospital examinations, A&E trips, various medications being thrown my way and doctors dismissive of anything serious being wrong because of my age.

So because nothing was wrong, and because they didn’t feel I needed regular scans, I went travelling. Win. Three months in Australia and Thailand was something i’d been wanting to do for ages – how very original. A carefree, 20 something traveller – bliss! But despite the idyllic beaches, copious amounts of Chang and this great, great tan I was getting, I knew my body wasn’t happy. I could no longer put my swollen stomach down to a laddish beer belly – I mean who am I kidding, my copious amount of Chang was 2, and maybe a slurp of a Thai cocktail bucket!

So I came home. After being seen by a brand new shiny doctor at a brand new shiny surgery and explaining to him that I had this overwhelming feeling that I was carrying in my body something that just shouldn’t be there, an alien of some sort, which of course sounds ridiculously crazy but there was no other way to explain it, he suggested we re-do all tests carried out at previous surgeries. I was referred to a gastroenterologist consultant and from results of an ultrasound I was rushed to a Haematologist consultant.

A haematologist, a blood doctor. Bizarre, but I wasn’t at all worried, my blood was fine, I was never ill, and having worked with children for the past 8 years i’d built up this incredibly unbreakable immune system, I was untouchable! Just like my trusty (now rusty) peugeot 206 that had survived, well 7 years of me torturing it – I won’t go into details, partly because there’s too many stories to tell and mainly because no one would get in the car with me again! But basically me and my peugeot are as ‘ard as nails!

Sooo, the news then that the lymph node that sits alongside my aorta that should be 1cm in size had grown to 7x10cm, well, there were no words. I stared at the image of this alien mass for what feels like forever. I remember being told by someone prior to this appointment, that you should only worry if you’re seeing an oncologist – they’re the guys you never want to see, ever, and as I was seeing a haematologist it was fine, so when he handed me an emergency oncologist chemotherapy card, I knew then that I was well and truly fucked! Its like when Charlie had the golden ticket in his hands, except completely fucking not. Charlie’s ticket was the start of something incredibly happy and amazing, my ticket was cancer and my chocolate factory was a hospital. Screw Charlie and his luck. I could do with a chocolate factory and an army of chocolate covered Umpa Lumpas right now.

I don’t cry, I keep my feelings under lock and key, i’m untouchable remember, the tears then that involuntarily fell once I heard this news, well they just wouldn’t stop. Shock, terror, disbelieve, a multitude of feelings and thoughts came flooding in. It was just unbearable. Like the bury my head in the sand type of girl that I am I picked up my coat and bag, and in a very British manner shook the consultants hand and thanked him – its funny, even in the most desperate of situations we always fall back on our very British politeness, and with tears streaming down my face I walked out of the room. If I didn’t hear anymore then surely it wouldn’t be true. Running away from things had always worked in the past, so why not now? So I left my sister in there to continue talking to the consultant. My sister, my incredibly brave, supportive, and positive sister came out of that room with an energy of defiance, I would beat this, this was one thing that I couldn’t run away from and that I had to face head on. And so, let the battle commence. I’m ready. 

The awkward talker

I’m not a great talker, I get by through mumbling and find small talk painfully unbearable. The idea of talking out loud about my feelings, or myself in general, feels unnecessary – i’d take listening to hours and hours of my friends love dramas over talking about myself any day.

But now I have something that I can’t avoid talking about, something I can’t mumble my way through and something that unfortunately tops the tearful love dramas – damn it. So this is where this blog comes in, a platform for talking and sharing something without having to actually talk. I’m sold.

So lets introduce this ‘something’ and reason for this blog, no round of applause people, just lots of heavy booing, jeering and hissing, to the alien bastard that is Cancer. Fucker.