Don’t panic. I mean it in a good way. Day 8 of 14 completed and nothing awful has happened. If anything, I feel better this month than last. That may of course have to do with the change in the pill size. Now I only take this many twice a day and they sip down nicely with toast. I’m consuming an awful lot of Warburton’s Toastie. I just wish I had George Clooney on Zoom!
The white one is optional as it’s the anti-nausea one and I’m inclined to give it a miss most mornings. The large white capsule is meant to prevent damage to my stomach lining but I don’t think even that stands much chance against chemo drugs which destroy anything in their path (a hard lesson I learnt last time). The orange one was prescribed for neuropathic pain, has zero effect but had a miraculous impact on anxiety - I don’t feel it in the same way or so often. Were it not for the bloody cancer, I’d now be focusing on reducing this medication and observing my levels of anxiety. As it is, shove it in - I need it.
So this, I’m afraid, is my life right now. All focused on pills and side effects, waiting, waiting for the axe to fall - severe diarrhoea, cracked and bleeding soles and palms. Cycle 2 was, my oncologist said, the hardest to get through and then it eases up. I occasionally have a red patch on the edge of my palm but there’s no discomfort and the skin is just my skin - no drying or cracking, no itching or soreness. How come I’m allowed to escape side effects? This is too good to be true. Then I remember that I’m as weak as the proverbial kitten and have a propensity to topple in the most inconvenient places. I keep looking at the staircase and wondering if it would be stupid to install a gate temporarily - if they make them adult-height. Dennis has agreed to a second banister but right now I don’t feel I need it.
I did join in an online group for women with secondary breast cancer, run by Breast Cancer Now. I did find it very helpful because a lot of the time was spent with their discussing how they came to terms with their diagnoses which was the topic I brought to the table (other topics - diarrhoea, constipation). However, someone asked if I’d been linked with a hospice yet and I mentally did a runner. I think it’s too soon for me to be thinking about things like that. Talking with the oncologist had been hard enough. Let’s give the capecitabine a chance first?
On the happy side, my story is at last online. Was it February when I heard mine had been one of the stories selected? Didcot Writers is scrupulously fair - every winner gets two weeks unimpeded exposure online before the next story goes up. Thing is, they are running way behind now. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to see it there ‘in print’ and to reread it. It was a story I wrote in response to a visual stimulus from a newspaper when I was doing the Just Write course - only I had to slash it from 1500 to 500 words. I think it still works but there are a lot of unanswerable questions even I don’t know the answer to, let alone the reader. If you’d like to look, it’s here till Sunday week: https://didcotwriters.wordpress.com/blog/?fbclid=IwAR0B9S4HDCMkOkdMilAL_MVbXrRNJfcILIQLQWJahVxPtrPN38ho_zfzmeM
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