I think for those majority who have not had to have chemotherapy the horror is in the administration. The shots of grey people, sitting in grey environments, being slowly and purposefully poisoned is the stuff of nightmares; a sci fi image from which there is no escape!
Indeed it must vary from person to person,cancer to cancer, cycle to cycle and drug to drug, but my observations of, and experience in current practice, are that the period of actual chemo is not the worst part of the cancer treatment, merely the beginning.
For me sitting for days, then hours on end, whilst various concoctions; to hydrate me, strengthen my physical response, encourage my renal function, kill new cell growth and finally flush through my systems, has been tedious but otherwise uneventful. Your don't immediately feel ill, there is no pain surge or fight with nausea and the systems which fight off poisonous invasion are well under control.
Thanks to all the cancer research, gone are the days when the doctors only real concern was to attack those cancer cells & the side effects were often largely ignored or solutions not yet found.Nowadays the medics have finely tuned the concoctions so your digestive system does not try to reject, your cerebral response does not cause reaction and your lymphatic & blood circulation works to its best; they treat the whole patient and the whole of the issues with & caused by the cancer.
The hardest part is the aftermath of the treatment; the three weeks in between treatments and the struggle mentally & physically and it has a sort of pattern & near predicable time scale, with unpredictable outcomes. It runs something like this:
Wk 1 feeling really rough, unreasonably tired, lacking energy, yet constant insomnia Food & drink tastes strange / unpleasant and smells are often extreme & overpowering. Favourite foods are undesirable, even water tastes unpalatable, food cooking smells nauseating and no perfume or deodorant works, it all smells foul.
Wk 2: Actually as above, but worse as the white blood cells are now well depleted and your immune system is compromised. I have had strange food desires, as my poor body tries to readjust the balance within. So far its been; dried apricots, scotch eggs, Dime bars, olives & anchovies. OK doesn't sound that bad but in quantity, together or in the middle of the night not good.
Wk 3: Much improved, less physical illness & discomfort and greater energy, but not to be fooled try & do any 'normal' physical activity and you will quickly know your limitations. Its a week to cram in any social activity and get out & about, but it does have an emotional down side. As the fateful day for the oncologist & subsequent chemo nears the ' fight or flight' response makes you tearful, angry, fearful and despondent, in equal measures.
So you go from being house bound only wanting to stay in your safe place, to paranoid about going out for fear of sudden illness and the ever danger of infection, to craving social contact and desperate to do something physically demanding, just get out and live.
And at the end of the three weeks, when you are at your best, comes the upset of having to cancel events, concern at offending others, seeming inconsistency and trying too hard to be well. Everything circles round in your brain, your behaviour is far from rational and then you have to prepare for the onslaught all over again, perhaps that's why they call the chemo sessions ' cycles'.
So the thought of sitting in that room linked to a drip is far from fearful, infact its quite cathartic, everyone in the same boat with an obvious cause & shared enemy. Well at least that what we reassure each other with nods & smiles & words...we are warriers preparing for battle. This is putting our armour on. practising our moves; the real fight occurs alone in the houses & bedrooms, the hearts & minds of the individuals.
Rocky Ready 6th chemo...bring it on!
