Picc line time

Although positive thinking is something I try to live by, so is honesty. So I'm sorry if this scares anyone who is reading this for reassurance - heres me being honest.

The last chemo was not good. Worse than that actually, it was bad. The veins in my hands have had enough. Now, I didn't have great veins to start off with, so it has always been quite difficult but last chemo was the final straw. I think pumping painful chemotherapy down veins which are already pretty damaged was never going to be pain free. But it was very sore indeed. The nurses said they've never seen me cry so much. The last of the drugs which goes in over 2 hours was 2 hours of gritting my teeth with a heat pad on my arm in an already too hot room.

A week and a half on, the skin on my hand is still very sensitive to the touch and I have only just become able to wiggle all of my fingers without wincing. I'm not quite sure why this has happened but I will be sure to ask the doctor on Monday.


So I've summoned up what remains of my inner strength and decided to have a picc line put in for the final 4 treatments. This is a tube which will go into my upper arm and be threaded through the vein right up to where it enters my heart. The chemotherapy will be entering a much larger vein than the ones in my hands, with a much faster flow of blood, so it shouldn't cause as much (if any) damage to the veins. I'm having it put in on Tuesday, the day before chemo. It will be inconvenient in terms of showering etc as I cannot get it wet but nowhere near as inconvenient as my sore hand/arm has been for the past week and a half.

Shlurping vino

Sorry for the absence in blogging activity over the last week or two! I have been a very busy bee so I'm going to split it up into a few blog posts for ease of reading. In my last post I completely forgot to mention what I had actually done that day - a trip to Vinopolis with my friend of 15 years Emma! If you don't know it, Vinopolis is a wine tasting building in london popular with tourists and those who enjoy a glass of wine, or two or three... like myself and Emma.

We headed up to London around midday and purchased lunch at borough market which is just round the corner. I made a fatal error in buying a pulled pork bap with a rather spicy sauce on it. I just couldn't handle the heat. We then went and sat out at a pub terrace overlooking the river, which was very close to Vinopolis itself. We ordered some chips having realised that drinking on a semi-empty stomach might not be the smartest of ideas..!

Vinopolis itself was an interesting experience and actually allowed me to work out what type of wines I like. I've never been a keen red wine drinker but I actually really liked all of the red wines that I tried.

People are often suprised that I am still able to drink whilst having chemotherapy, and that I have an appetite for it. I couldn't help but wonder if people at Vinopolis guessed that my bald head was due to chemo as opposed to an edgy fashion statement. And if so.. were they judging me for drinking? Who knows!

Summer time!

It's now Sunday... so it has been 9 days since my last chemo (sorry for the delay in posting on here, the sun has been a big distraction). I think the veins in my hands have had enough of the needles and the poison they've been subjected to. I have always thought it's quite nice to have hands without veins sticking out but chemo makes me want to have perfect cannula hands - with those big, juicy, pertruding veins that the nurses so love. So the cannula went in easily BUT I had to have a heat pad on my arm for most of the day to try and make it less painful as the chemo went in. Which on a normal day, would have been fine, but when it's 28 odd degrees outside and the room already feels like a sauna, it is not nice having the addition of a heat pad. 

The warm weather did somehow make me feel better than I normally do in the few days after chemo though. Or maybe it was a psychological thing? Who knows! My hand and arm were sore for a while afterwards until only yesterday really, which is much longer than normal. It prevented me playing tennis the other day which REALLY annoyed me. 

My aunt Jo (my dads sister) and my cousin Jake came to visit from South Africa this week and spent a few days at ours. We had a lovely time enjoying the weather in the garden and yesterday went out for a really nice meal. It was at a pub called The Royal Standard in Beaconsfield which is the oldest freehouse in England (over 900 years old!!!). After dinner we went back to the house to carry on drinking, and played a great game my aunt taught us called 'Splash'. This ended with me having to pour several glasses of water over myself.. but despite this I loved the game!

 Me and christopher went strawberry picking the other day and made a tasty pavlova!

Dizzy is still unbearably cute however she has grown (this was not part of the deal when we bought her). I am actually obsessed with her though. Every time I leave the house I miss her and whenever I wake up in the morning she is the main thing which drags me out of bed and downstairs! I know what you're thinking... how sad... but everyone who has met her will or should understand.

Pimms O'clock

It's that time of year! Me and my family have always enjoyed playing a bit of tennis, but the highlight of the tennis-ing (is that a word?) year for me is definitely Wimbledon. Me and Christopher were lucky enough to get our hands on a couple of centre court tickets for today. We saw both of the womens semi-finals. The first match was... uninspiring to say the least. But the second match, in which Lisicki played (the women who knocked out Serena Williams) was incredibly close and had me so stressed by the end I felt like I might need a massage. That's the only thing wimbledon is missing. Pimms... tick. Strawberries... tick. Massages for the AUDIENCE... you heard it here first.

It's half 11 and I just thought I'd write a quick post before tomorrow as tomorrow is chemo number 7, and I'll be too ill to write for a few days. I was thinking the other day about how weird the concept of chemotherapy is. Especially once you are finally 'cured' or 'cancer-free' as I supposedly am. I'd say I feel healthier than I have done in years. I'm used to having colds approximately once every month or two, accompanied by the odd infection such as tonsillitis (until I had the damn things removed). However the last time I had a cold was about 7 months ago! So yeah, I feel great, yet tomorrow I will head down to the hospital to be attached to a drip and injected with drugs to cure me, but in doing so make me feel like shit for days. Where's the logic in that??

If you're wondering why I'm still having chemotherapy when the scan shows that the cancer is as good as gone, let me explain. The bulk of the disease will be localised to the lumps, which were in my neck, my chest and abdomen/groin (I think). But cancer has the ability to metastasise, meaning that it can spread from organ to organ via the bloodstream. The aim of the next 6 treatments is to catch and kill (I should stress these are not strictly biological terms..) the metastasised disease, so that in the months and years to come I don't get secondary cancer. 

It's late and my brain is half asleep so if that explanation made no sense I'll edit it in a few days time once I've recovered from chemo club tomorrow. Goodnight all!

Take THAT Cancer

So today has been a nerve-wracking day to say the least. Although I do think of myself as an optimistic person, I like to prepare for the worst in situations like these. It makes it easier if the results are bad. But the fantastic news is... it's GONE! Or almost gone, anyway. The doctor said the results were the best possible results we could have hoped for, which works for me! I'll obviously still have to have the next 6 treatments and another scan after these to check that its still gone. But essentially I am 'in remission'. I know that the next 5 or so years will be a bit scary as I'll be having more scans to make sure it hasn't come back, but after today I am feeling relatively positive. Apparently past studies and research have shown that at this point, if the cancer is gone, there is a very small risk of me having secondary cancer in the years to come. Part of me wants to go on Google Scholar and do a little research for myself (rather than taking the doctors word for it) but I will probably just scare myself. So for now - what the doctor says, goes.

Here's a question. So I've had some amazing news today yet all I can do is cry? Why is this? And is the wine I'm sipping on (glass number 3) helping?

One of the best things about the results is that I feel like I can start looking forward to our family holiday to New York in October. We haven't had a family holiday in a while, all five of us, and I have always wanted to go to New York. I am particularly looking forward to the shopping but there is lots of other stuff to see and do so I'll be doing lots of research over the coming months. WOOO!!