Finally! A full chemo cycle.

This morning I woke up fresh, bright eyed and bushy tailed. Full of energy, I put on some African music and danced my heart out. This was around 9am, just before I was to take my cyclophosphamide pills which, I knew, would change everything.

After four weeks of ups and downs, on Tuesday I was finally able to start a full 3 week CMF chemo cycle. This consists of an intravenous 'bolus' of methotrexate and 5FU first week, intravenous 'bolus' of 5FU the second week and 14 days of 100mg cyclphosphamide in pill form. The third week is a period of rest free from medication. The week after that, it's all repeated. I am told I will have a total of four cycles, and this is my third, so I expect to be finished sometime mid-August.

In the meantime...

I have to cope with...

Soon after I took the chemo pills at 9:45am, my mood changed completely. My lips started tingling, my stomach constricting. My mind was getting foggy and tears poured down my face. Not a happy chappy.  I took notes, because I knew the mood would lift and I would forget the details. So, here it is:

' Just a half hour ago I wrote a note to ... (a friend) to say that I'll live a long time. Now, I have no thought of the 'after'. Just want to cope with the present and get it over with. Half hour ago I was full of hope. Now, I just am. There's no past or future, just the now, and the strange sensations coursing through my body and the coldness of my tears. I can explain it all as a physical reaction to the medication, but emotionally all I can do is scream: THIS IS A NIGHTMARE.'

This is the point where my 'coping mechanism' kicks in and I look for things to do to distract myself from my distress. I think I mentioned somewhere in this blog that I moved house in February, when I was really ill. It's just  a very small, one bedroom garden apartment, where I plan to eventually have a vegetable garden, but I am still unpacking and slowly making the place habitable – with lots of help from amazing friends. So, I've taken to sorting out small things that make life more pleasant. Yesterday I sorted out my CDs and thereby liberated two large stackable drawers that will now be used to help organise my bedroom closet. Today I plan to start copying the CDs to an external hard drive.

'OK, so the tears are gone, but now, instead of the 'lightness of being' and energy, I feel like my body is imploding, like someone is sitting on my chest, my bum glued to the sofa. It's difficult to even make the decision to move. My vision is blurring slightly. I am putting drops in my eyes to stop them burning. My throat is starting to get sore. One bright thought – these symptoms will disappear by evening, only to start again tomorrow after I take the next cyclophosphamide dose.'

It's 11:30am as I write this blog and I am starting to feel better. The sun is shining outside in my garden and I am expecting a friend to visit, so we can go for a walk. It's very important to keep walking and exercising during this period. I am not always able to do it.  The fatigue I mentioned above comes and goes during the day. I never know when it will hit. Yesterday, I walked to my local cafe with friends (two blocks). When we were ready to leave I could hardly walk and they had to bring the car to take me home. And so it goes...