I turned to the elderly lady next to me in the waiting room. “What’s ‘it’ like?” I whispered. She looked as if I’d just asked her the cause of the Second World War
She tried to answer but couldn’t. “It’s hard work,” was all she’d say. She was finishing six cycles of chemotherapy and I was just starting. After the shock of hearing that I had stage four ovarian cancer last April came the challenge of chemo. “You won’t be able to go through this alone,” said one disapproving doctor. “You won’t be able to cook, clean or shop,” said friends. By the time I started it, in June last year, after getting over my hysterectomy, I was truly frightened. I stocked up with food as if I was entering a siege.
Chemo is usually a two-day process. For me it started with a blood test and 20 steroids to combat drug rejection. The cancer drugs were given the next day, over six hours, and they were to continue every three weeks for four months. As the nurse put the canula into the back of my hand, for my first session, my blood pressure rocketed with stress. She fed in saline, two cancer drugs, and Piriton to prevent allergies.
I quickly found that it is very hard to describe the feelings you experience with chemo. After each session I was fine for two days. The steroids make you buoyant, but then comes a slump that lasts five to seven days; it was like living in someone else’s body and mind. I felt pains at the top of my ribs and aching in my bones, toenails and scar tissue.
The drugs gave such an odd feeling of discomfort, like being squeezed, stretched, prodded. There was nausea, wind, constipation, hunger, tingling and numbness in hands and feet so that I felt as though I was walking on blocks of wood. There was also insomnia.
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Nausea is the great enemy of the chemo patient. Some people just fade away, unable to eat. I found that if I ate, the sickness usually abated. I actually put on weight, feeling hungry even in the middle of the night, relishing food as a comfort, despite having a nasty taste in my mouth like burnt coffee.
It took me four days to pick up after the first chemo, seven after the second, each time a bit longer, but I was able to look after myself. During those bad days I’d feel a nervousness. I longed for company but didn’t want to see anyone.
Chemo is a time of fragility; you can’t swim, garden or take any risks because your immunity is low. You are tempted to hide away, as if you have turned into a monster, and sometimes you have. Perhaps it was because of a short heatwave but I was a stranger to myself, hot, sweating, full of bitter thoughts, exasperated by everything. But those bleak days always ended with a moment of transformation when I would switch back from wanting to kill everyone, even the cat, to tranquillity. I began to wait eagerly for those magic moments.
I lost my fear of the clinic very quickly. The nurses were kind and I met some characters: an old lady in a tea-cosy hat with long grey hair and no teeth; a Somali woman who had been rejected by her community for “being too Western”. I made friends with a lecturer from the Open University.
Like prisoners in a concentration camp, we jostled uneasily together, united by our fears and our appearance. I was told that going bald would be traumatic. After the initial shock it wasn’t too bad, and friends sent me beautiful turbans and scarves.
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My ordeal by chemotherapy ended on September 29. My toes and fingers still tingle but the main effect is psychological. Doctors say that the cancer may return within two years, so I might go through it all again. I have had support from Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centre, but it haunts my days. During chemo I met courageous people, though, and I can only hope that the experience has made me a better person than I would have been.
Jane Kelly’s blog is: icantbelieveitsreallycancer.blogspot.com