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Thursday 24 July 2014

If you’re ever going to find a silver lining, it’s got to be a cloudy day…


(I’ve stolen that from a song, but I think it’s very apt. And all in a good cause eh?).

Problem is though, it’s almost bloody impossible to find that silver lining when we’re in the middle of a heatwave and you’re lying in a hospital bed (for the umpteenth time) looking outside at a cloudless blue sky. But, we know I’m not one to dwell, and we also know that this being England, it’s only a matter of days before it clouds over again and silver linings are ten a penny.

Chemo this time is hard. Bloody hard. I don’t know how I did it last time – going to work the day after my treatment, going out for dinner, nipping off to see friends around the country. Maybe it’s because I was weaker when I started this time (I had two fully functioning lungs first time round lest we forget), maybe it’s because my body is wondering why the hell I’m putting it through all this nonsense again. Maybe it’s because I generally feel a bit queasy in 30 degree heat so if you bung drugs on top of that it’s only going to make me feel shoddy. Whatever it is, it’s harder.

Last time round, I didn’t get admitted to hospital once. I couldn’t even entertain the idea that I would, so intent was I on proving to the world and his wife that this cancer business wasn’t going to affect MY life. I was going to be normal – I was going to drink red wine and eat burgers, work as much as I could (it wasn’t every day by any stretch, but still…), make time for everyone I heard from, reply to every text, and prove to everyone that I was JUST FINE. Woe betide anyone who approached me with a pitying head tilt. I had cancer and it wasn’t going to make a jot of difference.

This time, I have nothing to prove. I got it wrong last time and when you get it wrong, those pesky little cells take full advantage. If I’m knackered, I go to bed. I’m appalling at replying to messages (please, please don’t take offence if you’ve been in touch and I haven’t replied – yet). For the first weekend after the first chemo when I hadn’t been downstairs in two days other than to go to the loo, Ma Booth popped upstairs to tell me she was worried I was withdrawing from society (which did, to be honest, sound a little Pride and Prejudice. She had a point though). If I lie in bed til 1 in the afternoon watching box sets, I couldn’t give a toss. My diet is revamped - I now have the dubious honour of being a vegan tee-totaller... (not a sentence I ever thought I'd write...). This time it’s about me, and listening to my innards, and if they’re telling me to sleep, I will jolly well sleep. I love seeing people, I love having visitors, but if I decide I just want to hole up and bury my head, I have no qualms whatsoever changing my plans. Most tellingly though, if I feel dodgy, I’m straight back up to that hospital. Sometimes I feel like a right wimp for doing it – like I’m failing myself somehow by not managing to stay out of hospital, but as we now know, sometimes I’m not right about all things. Galling as that may be.

Each time I’m admitted, it seems to be for something that I’m completely unaware of. I go in with one thing and they poke and prod me and announce another. The first time I went in feeling sick and a bit short of breath and convinced my lung had filled up again, and the doctors admitted me because my pulse rate was insanely high and they were worried about infection. Turns out my heart rate tends towards that of a slightly panicked woodland creature even when I’m feeling fine. The second time I went in with a pain in my side, which I was convinced was my lung filling up (there’s a pattern). Turns out my liver was inflamed, I was insanely dehydrated, I had ridiculously low blood pressure and neutropenic sepsis so I was whisked into a private room for a week and hooked up on IV antibiotics and fluids until my temperature stopped going bonkers and I began to feel vaguely human again.

This time round, after the third chemo, I was DETERMINED not to go back in. I was convinced we’d nailed it – Dr S had put me on injections to boost my white blood cells so I could fight any infection, and that’s what hit me last time, so I figured if we nailed that we were covered. I wasn’t prepared for the heat though. Bloody hell. By Friday evening, after a lovely day of feeling normal and going for lunch with my godmother, I was stretched on the sofa feeling roasting hot, but shivering cos my skin felt cold. I think last time it’s what I knew as itchy skin day, and I ignored it, but this time I took my temperature like a good girl, watched it hit 38 and headed in for an evening in A&E.

We got to the hospital at half 7, I was in a bed on a ward at midnight. Turns out I’m not the only one who can’t handle the heat – the A&E department was stuffed with people who’d fainted, and an incredible number of football playing boys with their right foot in plaster. And despite the whole place constantly ebbing and flowing and nurses running from one patient to another to another while being told they should really be seeing another, they manage to maintain this incredible feeling of calm and competence. Still, after 4 hours, you’ve had all the calm and competence you can handle, and a bed next to the window with a fan is, quite literally, just what the doctor ordered.

Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t my lung (it never is my lung), and despite the temperature my white blood cells were up and working and there was no infection to be seen. This time, my calcium had decided to take a little dip so I had to lie there (now feeling completely fine) while they filled me up with the calcium that had been over-zealously sucked back into my bones only 3 days previously. I know it’s not the most grown up attitude, but I really do feel like I should sometimes just shut my trap (Ma and Pa B, for the record, I won’t…).

But now, I’m out. And I’m feeling fine. And fingers crossed I’ll be feeling fine for the next two weeks until chemo number 4 (four!). And I’ll forget all the horrors and waltz back into the chemo like the whole thing’s an absolute doddle. And if those horrors hit, when they hit, and I’m feeling completely, appallingly, bone-achingly horrid, then SURELY it means the chemo has to be working. And that must be brightest, shiniest silver lining of them all.






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