Woohoo!!!!!

Good news... my scan was clear. Well, as good as! There are two nodes right in the middle of my chest that according to the radiologist's report are slightly bigger than 'normal'. They are 11mm and normally would be about 8 or 9mm. But considering that before my treatment they were 100mm, they've certainly shrunk a lot! My oncologist said that had I been a normal person (haha!) walking in off the street, he would look at the scans and say there was nothing wrong with me. So the extra 2mm is probably nothing and my chemo will definitely be over this Friday!

I have an appointment with a radiation specialist on the 2nd of May to discuss whether I need radiation just to be sure all the cancer cells are gone. I'm feeling pretty anxious about this appointment as I'm having very mixed feelings about having radiation. Obviously I'd like to be sure all the cancer is gone, but radiation has many risks. As it's my chest that would be getting radiated it can cause heart problems and there are also quite high risks of it causing secondary cancers later in life (being my chest this risk is particularly true for breast cancer).

So I'm feeling extremely relieved that the scan was clear and I won't have to have any more horrible chemo sessions. Hopefully I won't be too anxious for the next week and a half while waiting to find out about the radiation.

It feels like I was just writing about being two-thirds of the way through and in a few days I'll be saying that I'm six-sixths of the way! The whole thing! Completed! Done! Over!

Anticipating...

I had my CT Scan this afternoon and I think I've made progress with my needle phobia! I didn't take my lorazepam (anti-anxiety tablets) and I was fine! Obviously I still hated it and couldn't wait for it to be out of my arm, but I didn't freak out, didn't cry and best of all didn't feel like a big, fat sook!

So now the hard part. I know there are pictures there that show whether or not the treatment has been successful, but I have to wait till Wednesday to find out. It's going to be a very tough, very anxious 48 hours.

I have this totally illogical and irrational feeling that I am entitled to be fine, as though anyone who undergoes treatment will unquestionably be cured. Basically at the moment my plan is to get the all clear, celebrate, continue with my life and forget I ever had cancer.

I know that’s not reality and regardless of the outcome of my current treatment, cancer will be with me in some sense forever. However, if things could go somewhat as above, I’d be very grateful!

So, for the next couple of days I’ll be doing lots of hoping (and a bit of worrying). I’m also looking beyond my final treatment this Friday and dreaming of things like my hair growing back and the black circles under my eyes disappearing! Can’t wait!

Only one more session to go

I cannot ever recall my body being so tired. I don't really feel so tired in the sense of needing to sleep more, but my body is just exhausted. I want to sit down all the time and my arms and legs just feel like dead weights. I've also begun to get really achy muscles during the past week.

My last chemo session was awful. The needle got bent in my arm so after much digging and rearranging it was moved to the other arm, where the same thing happened! It would work for about a minute, then the machine would start beeping saying that it had stopped. We did some rearranging and so for the last 40 minutes Leah and I were holding it on an angle where it would keep going. This worked, but unfortunately Leah had to push down on it really hard, so it was quite painful. Furthermore, I still have sore bruised arms a week and a half later.

I have a CT scan next week and I'm feeling a bit anxious about it. It's really hard not to get my hopes up about a positive result. I'm trying to not think about it.

Nearly two thirds!

Tomorrow is my fourth treatment, which will make me two thirds of the way through it. For some reason I think that saying I have one-third of my treatment left seems like less than saying I have 2 treatments to go!

Dave, our school's PE teacher (and one of the most thoughtful and genuine guys I know) has organised for the students to walk to school on each of my treatment days. They meet down the road from school and walk up over the big hill to represent overcoming a challenge, while I overcome my own challenge. Furthermore, they each give a gold coin donation which goes to the Cancer Council of Australia. On my last treatment there was such a big crowd they needed a police escort up the road!

Over the last week I've begun to get neuropathy in my fingertips. The tips of my thumbs and my little finger are numb. It feels sort of like pins and needles, except it won't go away! I spoke to my oncologist about it and he said it's likely to get worse and unfortunately unlike other side effects it can take a long time to go away after treatment stops. But, like the hair loss I'd rather have numb fingers than cancer!

Once again I want to say a huge thank you to all my awesome friends and family and thank you to everyone that has left me such lovely comments on this blog. I love you all!!

I'm over it

The past few weeks have been a bit up and down for me. I’ve had some really fantastic times and some really awful times. I suppose I’m starting to get quite tired which is in turn making a bit emotional. I feel that I’m getting to a point where I’m sick of the treatments, sick of feeling crappy and sick of waiting. I’m just over it. But, I’m not allowed to be over it. I’m only half way through my treatment so I have to find a way to move past these feelings.

Over the past few months I’ve been really quite angry about the whole thing. I constantly think ‘why me?’. I know it’s ‘why anyone?’, but I can’t help but be really frustrated by the fact that I feel that I’ve done the right things and it’s still happened to me. I don’t smoke and don’t drink excessively. I hate the sun and avoid it to the point where people make jokes about how white I am. I don’t like polluting my body with medicines, so would be lucky to take paracetamol or anything a couple of times a year. Furthermore I do many things that are supposed to benefit your health and help stop you getting cancer. I play sport regularly, I eat a balanced diet and drink heaps of water. Broccoli (supposedly an anti-cancer food) is my favourite vegetable and I eat it all the time! I wouldn’t want this to happen to anyone, yet I get so angry and upset when I see people choosing to sunbake or smoke or never eat vegetables. How can they do the wrong things and still enjoy a happy, carefree life?

Anyway, I’m trying hard not to be too bitter about this. I’m not an angry or resentful person and I’m determined to not let this experience make me become that way. I suppose the fact that I have done the right things means I don’t have to feel guilty. I can’t imagine how disappointed with myself I’d be if I new I’d caused this to happen.

As I mentioned earlier I’m really just over it. It’s really hard to keep pumping your body full of poisons that make you feel really crappy and tired, without a guarantee of being well at the end. It would be much easier to keep going back if you new for sure it was working. I have many reasons to believe that it is working (I feel better, I don’t have the B-Symptoms any more and I just had an x-ray that now shows a ‘normal’ chest). However, I want to know unquestionably, absolutely, without a doubt that it’s working.

I would like x-rays, CT scans, PET Scans, blood tests, biopsies, psychics, palm readers, Catholic Saints, the Dalai Llama, anything that will tell me I’m going to be ok. I have an inquiring mind that always needs to know everything. This case is no different. Anyway, I can’t do most of things and the ones I can do will still give me no definite answers. All I can do right now is keep going with my treatment and watch for fevers. I cannot make the chemo do what I want it to do and I cannot check up on it to find out if it is going to plan.

I’ve got to keep focusing on the good things. This experience is really making me appreciate my wonderful family and friends. I’m very lucky to have such supportive people helping me through this journey and allowing me to keep things ‘normal’.

I’d like to finish this post with a whole bunch of thank yous!

Thanks so much to Keryn, Ben, Andrea, Françoise and Suzanne for cooking us meals. It's so nice to come home and not have to cook. This is appreciated so, so , so much!

Thank you Melanie for my chemo bags! They make the day so much more bearable!

Thanks to everyone at work for putting up with my vagueness/forgetfulness, and just generally being so supportive.

Thanks Dani for coming to my treatment with me. Sorry it was such a boring day!

Thank you so much to everyone that has joined or sponsored our school’s team for World’s Greatest Shave and thank you to my mum and dad who are both shaving!!

Thanks Damo for the guitar!

Thank you Leah for listening to my emotional and irrational outpours, driving me around, coming along to various things with me, and generally just being there for me.

Thank you to Daniel for EVERYTHING!

Kids are so honest!

Well the students have been back at school for two weeks now and it’s been great. I’m teaching 8 and 9 year olds and I can’t believe how mature they’ve been about everything. They’ve asked me every question under the sun about the cancer and my treatment (kids aren’t backward about coming forward), but have been incredibly caring and helpful. I’ve received lots of hugs, bunches of flowers, cards and drawings. It’s very heart -warming.

As all teachers know, kids aren’t afraid to say what they’re thinking. I learnt this in my first year of teaching when we were learning a song and one of my students said “Miss C, you don’t sound like you when you sing, you sound awful”. I also know another teacher that was asked “why are your legs so chunky, when my mums are thin?”. I therefore knew that I’d get plenty of amusing stories out of having cancer. Here are some so far:

•I was wearing my wig on the first day, which is much shorter than what my hair was. I went into another classroom and one of the students said “I feel sorry for you Miss C”. Another student asked why, “because she’s got cancer” he replied. Then another student said “oh, I thought you felt sorry for her because she had to have a haircut”.

•Another time I was in the corridor outside my classroom wearing a bandanna. A kid from another class was at the other end of the corridor with his mum. “Bye Miss C” he called out, “See you tomorrow” I replied. As the walked out the door I heard him ask “what the heck is wrong with her head?”. I had a good chuckle to myself!

•Last year at school we had a crazy hair day and I wore a bright blue wig. A parent of an autistic student told me how she’d explained to her children before school went back this year that I had cancer and I might be wearing a bandanna or a wig. Her autistic child replied “Well Miss C has a blue wig, so she’ll be wearing that”.

•A student with Asperger’s Syndrome that I have taught for two years asked me “are you wearing that bandanna because of how you’ve got Asperger’s?”. Obviously he got mixed up between his diagnosis and mine!

I think I’m very lucky to be working with such supportive colleagues, but also wonderful students and their families. They are so caring, but at the same time I feel it is so helpful in allowing me to remain positive, have fun and enjoy lots of laughs!

A fabulous week!

First of all I’d like to start by saying that I've re-read my last post and am definitely not feeling that way anymore. After the initial shock of my hair falling out, I actually feel pretty good about it. I guess it's a visible sign that the chemo is doing something. If it's killing my hair cells then I can be more confident that it is also killing the cancer cells!

Now I can go on to tell you the good, well actually great, things that have happened to me this week. To begin with I went wig shopping with my two best friends and my step-sister. We bought a wig and a whole heap of scarves and had a lot of fun trying things on in the shop. My long-standing suspicion that I have a pin head was confirmed when the lady had to take the wig in for me as it was too big, and was reinforced again when I was trying on hats and they were all falling down below my eyes!

We also went out for breakfast –my first outing without hair. I was thrilled when I looked at the menu and saw blueberry bagels with cream cheese. Something I LOVE and haven’t had for ages! I went up to the counter to order them and the guy behind the counter said “Sorry, they didn’t get delivered today so we don’t have any”. Forgetting about my bald head and CanTeen Bandanna I replied “oh no, I’m devastated. I was so excited when I saw them on the menu, I think I might cry”. I was of course only joking, but the poor guy went white as a ghost and looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole. He must have been thinking ‘oh no, I’ve upset the poor cancer lady’.

The following day was Australia Day which I spent at my Dad’s house. It was lovely to just relax by the pool and chat with family. The next great part about this week was going back to work, as the summer holidays have now finished. I know work is not normally on people’s list of great things, but I love my job and the people I work with, so going back and seeing everyone was wonderful. My colleagues were very supportive and it was great to have a sense of normality in my life again.

On Thursday I had an appointment with my oncologist, which was definitely the highlight of the week. He was very pleased with how well I am taking to the chemotherapy. He also told me he thought that my ‘down to earth’ personality and positive outlook would mean that I would have less side effects. That was a nice compliment to receive and also reiterated to me how important the power of the mind will be in all this. Furthermore he said that as all my symptoms had disappeared (no more visible lymph node swelling, fevers or night sweats) he was confident that my next x-ray (in 3 weeks time) would give good news!

I went into my appointment armed with a list of questions I had been wondering about since my last appointment. What should I be eating? How often should I exercise? Can I have a glass of wine? What exactly are B-Cells? Should I have paid more attention in biology in high school? I bombarded the poor guy with so many different things he ended up lending me a medical book on lymphoma! The book is very interesting and has answered many of my queries, but I will probably now just go to my next appointment armed with more complex questions!

Friday was the not-so-great part of the week. Chemo number 2. My step-sister, Dani, came with me this time and thankfully it was a much shorter session this time. It was still about 5 hours, but at least it wasn’t 7 hours again! The worse part of the day was when the nurse tried for 10 minutes to get the cannula in the back of my hand, then gave up saying that my skin was too tight. I don’t really know what that means, but I’ll take it as a compliment and assume she meant it was youthful and firm! They ended up putting it in my arm which took about 10 seconds, but I now have a bruised swollen lump on my hand!

I left the hospital feeling fine and even went for a short walk when I got home, as I wanted some fresh air. However, about an hour later I was sick. Panic set in a bit then and I worried that I was going to get the days worth of nausea and vomiting I had heard that most people experienced. Luckily, that was it and I’ve felt pretty good since. Like last time I felt queasy all day Sunday and have been unusually tired and vague, but if that’s as bad as the side effects get for me then I’m stoked!