Misery Business
Chemo is dark, man! Really, really dark.
By the time chemo no 3 hit I had lost most of my hair and was beginning to feel some of the side effects. Then bam! Chemo 3 and 4. I thought I was dying. Literally dying. Chemo no 3 was the last FEC combo. It decided it was going to go out with a bang. Within three days=of the infusions, I was in so much pain I could hardly move. Looking back at it, I think this is what must have happened. Whilst I was asleep, Mike Tyson broke in.... He pummelled the living daylight out of me. Then he threw me on a train track which ran me over. Then he beat me up a it more. And then he left me to die....
I thought it couldn't get much worse.
Then I had chemo no 4. We switched to a new drug, Taxotere (Docetaxol) or otherwise know as "Hell's Brew". This is a really toxic drug (what chemo isn't?) and has to be given on its own as too strong tobe given alongside other drugs. It has to go in very slowly and you have to be monitored in case you have a bad allergic reaction. Need-less-to-say I was pooping my pants about this one. I had heard the horror stories. But all was o.k. It all went smoothly.
By this point, my white blood cell count was on the floor. So I had to inject myself with G-CSF (granulocyte-colony stimulating factor). This is a growth factor that stimulates the bone marrow to make more white blood cells. It has to be injected into your tummy and I had to do it for five days, 3 days after I had the chemo infusion.
I was prepared for some achey bone pain. I had been warned. Yeah, like the warnings were even remotely close to how it felt. The pains got worse and were pretty much constant. I became more tired and it was even more of a struggle to be "normal". I had the worst ever case of "man flu". I shall call it "chemo flu". Although that hardly describes how bad it was.
I spend my days watching films. And Jeremy Renner.
