Ours is not to reason why....Part 15

You can do it / Only one more to go / You've done so well, keep going / It will soon be over.

All true well meaning comments from friends and family as I approached the final chemotherapy at the end of March. End of March...even writing that date from this distance doesn't stop it feeling like a nightmare time in soft focus...not soft enough for my liking. I would like those sessions and the aftermath to be obliterated from my mind but I have a feeling it will be some time before that happens.

Everything you imagine about chemotherapy is true, it really is that bad, it does feel worse with each treatment and I am not surprised there is very little detail out there about what it is really like. If there was I'm not sure many would turn up. I am not trying to scare anyone by writing about such a taboo subject but I cannot dress this up, aside from the outstanding care I received there is nothing pretty about it, but that is my personal experience. there may be others out there who had a ball, I just haven't met them yet.

 After my fifth chemotherapy I was barely able to move from the bed to the sofa. I couldn't sleep at night and the chemo was really going to work on drying out my entire body, inside and out. Hand cream was used liberally all the time, less of a beauty ritual and more to stop my hands crisping up. Going to the toilet wasn't just unpleasant, it was like something from a horror film, I would wake up early, already panicking about needing to go. The trouble is your body doesn't stop working, it carries on with its daily functions regardless of the screaming pain it may cause. One particularly appalling morning I remember The poor Boyfriend... rushing around every local shop trying to find something, anything that might make things a bit easier, and coming back clutching a bottle of syrup of figs assuring me the disgusting mixture would work. I could only imagine him standing in the local pharmacy desperately trying to describe what was happening at home and looking for a cure.

I guess that's the magic and mystery gone from our relationship.

Why was there six treatments? This was a question we were starting to ask each other over and over. I was really scared of the last one, The Boyfriend could not bear the idea of me going through it all again, the fact it's the final treatment doesn't really make any difference, all you keep thinking about is the blow it will deal physically from the moment the stuff is injected.  It hasn't helped either that more than one consultant has given me the option of bowing out. That doesn't just sow a seed, that plants an allotment of doubt in your head, it's the lifeline you have been waiting for and you want to grab it with both hands and throw caution to the wind. The idea of not having another treatment, not doing that awful thing again and not dealing with the days and nights of sickness which follow it is so so tempting. Until you remember your friends and family.

I chose very carefully who I spoke to about this, whose advice I sought. Knowing those too close would think I was an idiot to stop at five and not continue with one more, certifiable even, but they weren't there in the weeks following chemo, and it's much easier to know what to do from a safe distance. Then I heard from a very good friend who knew someone who had been through this twice (I am wincing as I write that) and this particularly brave soul had very sagely said; 'You do the last treatments for those closest to you, because they need to see you complete it'. How true that is, but I still hadn't made up my mind.

In the meantime I was still questioning how they had arrived at six sessions, what is it dependent on? Who decides and how? I had an appointment to see the main man Radiotherapist as my Radiotherapy treatment was looming once the chemo was done and dusted. Apparently they needed to draw on my breasticles so they could zap me accurately. Forty six and a half years old and I have managed without a tattoo and now I have what looks like a makeshift prison one, a blue pen dot marks the spot, just in case I forget. Yeah right.

In that relatively short appointment I found out a whole heap of stuff I didn't expect to.

Firstly, apparently chemotherapy for breast cancer was introduced in the early 1970's and the poor women who were put on it at the time had to do twelve,.. yes twelve sessions. Unable to cope terribly well (no sh**) the medical profession cut the dose in half and women were then given six instead of twelve, and guess what the results showed? That there was no difference, none at all. Unimaginable.

So I asked the obvious, to me, question, well why stop at six? Why not cut it to four? See what the results throw up then. They like questions they can answer these consultants, what they don't like is a smartarse. Although I really wasn't trying to be one, it was a genuine enquiry.  Apparently you would need to test thousands of women to see if that made any difference and they simply don't have the resources or the time. In fact, he went on to tell me, many of his patients had stopped after treatment four or five.

Crikey. I had heard nothing so far that made me feel even slightly convinced that I should be continuing with anymore treatments, so I asked about my prognosis.

"Haven't you spoken to your oncologist about that?" He asked.
"Which one?" I replied, unable to mask the sarcasm. Okay, so now I was being a smartarse.

And down the shutters came, they do like to close ranks these consultants. He did give me a sort of prognosis, and then another bit of information I wasn't expecting.

"Well" He said, shuffling through my paperwork  "On the one hand your tumour was only 8mm, which is very small, but on the other hand it was triple negative so no receptors, they took it all out which was good but it was only 1mm away from your chest wall...not so good" He said.

He continued about how the operation was a success and blah blah blahed on about how the chemo is like a 'mopping up' solution and how the radiotherapy would be the ultimate zap it all away method, but I had already stopped listening.

'but it was only 1mm away from your chest wall'

This was the first time I had heard it was that close to my chest, I had been dealing with it as part of breast cancer, you know, the one that everyone tells you that if you are going to have any cancer then this should be it. No one had mentioned anything about my chest wall, and they have had plenty of opportunity, and there have been any number of consultants who could have mentioned it. At any time. But they didn't. Maybe it just wasn't that important...maybe they forgot.

Funnily enough after this fairly startling piece of news I decided to go ahead with no.6. There was no stopping me now, I wanted it, all of it. I also wanted whatever radiotherapy they could throw at me, clinical trial? Yes please. Extra booster week? Where do I sign? I went to see the original oncologist too, I needed to hear from her directly what my prognosis was. Brilliant apparently, no problem at all, she was very positive. I mentioned the chest wall thing but she reassured me they could not have dug any deeper, there was only muscle. Great, I think.

Somehow the chemotherapy managed to have the last laugh. The day before the treatment my blood levels were showing as low, possibly anaemic meaning a real possibility of delaying everything, unacceptable as far as I was concerned, I hadn't reached this far only to have it put off for a week. I actually prayed to have it, prayed I would be well enough, the irony (sorry) of that is not lost on me. My prayers were answered and my levels were thought to be strong enough to take one last hit.

I don't want to describe any of it, suffice to say it was grim. I want only to remember the two gorgeous Portuguese nurses, my favourites, who hugged me as I left, all of us in tears because it's strange to miss people whom you hope you will never have to see again.