One of the requirements of the chemotherapy is that blood work must be done prior to receiving chemo to ensure that one’s blood count is high enough to handle the treatment.  The blood tests must be done within a week of the chemo to ensure that accurate measurements are received.  For people travelling from Aberdeen this can mean that they head off to the hospital only to find that their blood results prevent the administration of the chemo and they are then forced to wait a week before they can try again.  For this reason, I arranged with Groote Schuur to have my blood tests done on the Monday before my treatment in Aberdeen so that if the results were poor, I would not have wasted my time travelling down and then being forced to wait an additional week.

So, last Monday morning I took myself off to the Aberdeen Hospital for my blood tests.  Once again I found myself in the hands of a Sister with a squint who, although able to actually pierce the skin in my arm quite painlessly, was unable to find the vein below it.  After much digging and prodding, she finally located the vein, drew blood and left me with a haematoma the size of a marble in my elbow joint.  My right arm is starting to resemble some sort of work of modern art – multi-hued and ugly.

The rest of Monday was spent plucking hair from head, while I tried to put my new-found energy levels to good work.  It was fantastic to be feeling a little better and I started to feel as if I was back to my old self again.

By Tuesday, I had started to resemble a burn victim.  My hair was bald in patches, with little tufts sticking up all over the place.  This is so not a good look for me and I decided the time had come to unveil my scarves.  Looking at myself in the mirror was a little difficult, as I finally felt that I looked like a cancer patient.  I am the last of the great accessorisers – I don’t even own a belt, for goodness’ sake – so trying to look good in a scarf is a whole new challenge for me!!  But, it certainly seemed preferable to the look I had going on underneath the scarf.

Wednesday brought about a new decision.  Annie had taken the falling out of my hair very badly.  In fact, “freaky” was how she had described it and she had cried terribly the night before about how horrible she felt watching it all fall out.  I couldn’t disagree – it was foul.  So, we decided to take matters into our own hands and just shave the whole lot off.  Nik and I decided that Annie should be the one to do it, in order to help her cope a bit better with the whole thing.  What a liberating moment it was when it was all finally shaved off!  I felt as if I had taken back some of my power against this illness by choosing how to handle the loss of my hair.

However, what I had not counted on is the fact that when you shave your head with an electric shaver, it does not leave you with a smooth and soft pate.  Far from it!  What you end up with is an entire head of Velcro.  Suddenly, my head was sticking to anything with a relatively rough surface.  I tried to wipe it off with a towel and the towel got wedged.  I had to peel it off from my head.  Putting on my scarf takes about twenty minutes because if it isn’t laid perfectly at the start, I cannot slide it around into place.  Sleeping was next to impossible because my head kept attaching itself to the pillow and when I tried to move it, I took the whole pillow with me.  Fortunately, the sleeping aspect did not become a major problem because my insomnia was so bad that I was only going to bed after 4.00am every morning, so only had to fight the pillow for a couple of hours before I had to get up.  This was definitely something to go on my list of things to discuss with the doctors on Friday.

On Wednesday, I got back my blood results and fortunately they appeared to be in good enough condition for me to have my chemo on Friday.  While this may seem a ridiculous thing to be pleased about, I don’t want to delay this treatment any more than I have to, so being well enough to have chemo is a real priority for me.  Aside from one result, the necrophils, which were a bit low, everything else was within the normal range and I was cleared for chemo.

On Thursday morning we packed up the family – again – and headed for Cape Town.  This time we left the dogs behind and arranged for our gardener to stay in the house while we were gone.  We don’t need any more nimble-fingered, free-loaders hanging out in our house while we are away.

I had prepared a list of questions, side-effects and medication requirements for my doctor prior to leaving, as one of the other side effects of this god-awful treatment is what they term, “chemo-brain” – similar to porridge-brain syndrome in pregnant women.  “Chemo-brain” ensures that a normally functional mind becomes completely dysfunctional to the point where I can walk into a room and forget entirely my reason for being there.  I struggle to remember words and names and I have had to take list-making to a whole new level in order to get anything done.  It is immensely frustrating and time-consuming, but hopefully has no lasting effect.

So, going into my second chemo cycle, I have no hair on my head, although the rest of my hair, including eyelashes and eyebrows seem to be resolutely holding on, I am a complete insomniac with little credible brain function, I haven’t vomited once and I have a pretty normal blood count.  Even more importantly, I have managed to forget how bad I really felt at the height of the chemo side-effects – probably due to chemo-brain – so I am optimistic about being able to handle to the next cycle.  Not bad going!  I am almost halfway through my chemo treatments and still going strong.

Bring on cycle 2!!

by Samantha Jankovich-Besan on Tuesday, 18 January 2011 at 18:27