I’ve started so I’ll finish

Since last we spoke people have taking to asking me how I’m feeling in myself as if I’m some kind of old person who’s just had hip replacement surgery. I don’t know the answer to the question by the way BECAUSE WHAT DOES IT EVEN MEAN – except maybe that after twenty weeks of chemotherapy I look so shitty that people can no longer, in good conscience, tell me I’m looking well all things considered?

The Carbo/Taxol chemo continues to give me an absolute battering. It turns out I’m allergic to the taxol half of the cocktail, but not quite allergic enough to merit abandoning the treatment altogether. So we press ahead – a little more slowly than before. As things stand, I seem to be getting the green light to go ahead with chemo once every fortnight rather than once a week as originally planned. It’s endlessly frustrating, not least because it means that every time I think I’ve got the chemo finishing line in my sights they come along and move it back by ANOTHER week. That said, I’m told the delays are unavoidable if I want my liver to have long enough to pull itself together before it gets the buggery poisoned out of it again.  Which, on reflection, I think I probably do….. and so I limp on, battle weary but determined to finish what I’ve started.

Some people sail through chemotherapy without so much as a second thought but for plenty more, it doesn’t quite work out like that. For a while, it looked like I might be one of the lucky ones, that I would just breeze through it with very little detriment to my life, but alas, it wasn’t to be. It isn’t so much that I hit a brick wall (as I was so often warned I would) but that the taxane based drugs came along and brought a tonne of bricks crashing down on top of me. For the first four cycles, chemotherapy was just something that happened alongside my normal life but now it is very much something that I find ways to endure. It seems like such an obvious thing to say, but I’ll be glad when this is all over.

Of course, it isn’t all bad because nothing ever is. There are always little chinks of light, tiny reasons to be cheerful, small pockets of hope. For one thing the sun is shining in Harborough once more. For another thing I’m off work now and so I stayed up way past my bedtime reading Pat Barker’s new novel ‘The silence of the girls‘ last night and after 100 or so pages I can categorically confirm that it is a THING OF ABSOLUTE BEAUTY. And for yet another thing, there’s Gryff because if he isn’t a reason to be cheerful, I’m sure I don’t know what is….

And for another, final thing, I’ve made it through twenty weeks worth of chemo already. Even if the worst case scenario comes to pass I’ve got less than that left in front of me. I guess what I’m saying is that if I could do what I’ve already done, then I can certainly do what’s left to get done – if you see what I mean.

Like I said – I limp on.

Meanwhile in other news I have now grown a convincing fuzz on my head and – this is the good bit – it very definitely isn’t looking grey so far. Huzzah! Still no sign of the eyebrows returning though, which is a source of constant consternation. I honestly didn’t realise how attached I was to them before they went and fell out….

Nothing else from me today save that I hope you are busy being out there in the world having all the fun it has to offer. I’ll leave you with a song, one of the prettiest songs I know, and bid you farewell – until next time of course…..

Love you lots like jelly tots,

WeeGee xoxox