Side effect's of survival.

That's one whole cycle of chemo completed!!

The infusion itself was straight forward, drug line hooked up to my PICC line and i felt fine for an hour. Then the sickness started, despite getting two types of antisickness through my line before chemo! I only vomited twice but the nausea was horrendous! I ended up swapping one of my oral antisickness medicines for two different ones through my GP, which helped a little. This lasted about three/four days and then subsided. On about day three the aches started, which is apparantly more down to the neulasta jab that was given in my tummy the day after chemo. Headache and "growing pain" type aches to both my legs, this eased over the next few days.

After all that subsided the tiredness hit! Every single task, no matter how small, felt like too much. Brushing my hair, dressing, even getting out of bed. After talking to a few people I realised I needed to give in to this feeling and have a nap whenever I needed one. As someone said to me, I'm fighting cancer, not the treatment. The tiredness seemed to last through the rest of the cycle, but wasnt as severe after a few days.

As I previously posted, I had my head shaved on day 9 and raised a massive £1222 for charity alongside donating my hair! Unfortunately some lovely insect must have taken a shine to me the day before as I ended up with a big red patch on my leg, which resulted in me having a temperature. I did as I was told and rang the chemo nurse's and got to spend that night in the care of some fabulous nurse's. Had a dose of intravenous antibiotics and sent home on two different oral antibiotic's. A few days later I was back in A&E being checked over again. This time the assessment unit didn't want to keep me! That jab after chemo must have worked as they were happy with my white blood cells and neutrophil count!

Then came my "well week" my body is given the chance to recover itself before the next dose. I had a fabulous week and got to see most of the important people in my life and had some quality time with the boyfriend!

My stubble that was left over from my head shaving party has mostly fallen out now and I almost have a properly bald head! I'm glad it's gone so quickly, its like being stabbed with pins everytime something touches my head, again I am reassured that this is normal. Bonus points as a woman... I also no longer need to shave under my arms, I seem to have lost that hair too!

Yesterday the whole thing started again, at least I kinda know what to expect now and what foods I'll manage to eat. Here goes! Xx