Radiotherpy and just how fun it is.

well its a long time since i've written anything of any real significance, and even longer since i've written about my specialist mastermind subject of the moment, cancer. I'm using radiotherapy as my excuse, its exhausting me. Despite having been reassured by numerous medical practioners that i was un likely to feel any side effects until about half way throgh the course of treatment(30 treatments 5 days aweek for 6 weeks), i felt crap within a few hours of my first session, slouching on the car bonnet, wretching in to the gutter outside cardiif museum. My vomit would probably have been its most exciting exhibit. The following day they suggested prahaps my symptoms may be psychosamatic, really? hours perched on the toilet suffering the dreaded rs and its all in my head?
So this continues for some time, two weeks infact, and for all those of you who are going through the same thing, here are what few pearls of wisdom i have to offer forth. Don't take the anti anything stuff they prescribe for you, not anti sickness not anti diarroear, if you currently feel crap, take those and feel more shit than you previously felt was humanly possible, and bear in mind we're cancer patients, so we know what shit feels like, yes it is that bad. my suggestion instead of all of this is get yourself a bloody good homeopath. So now thank you vivienne( my homeopath, she is in the phone book, if your looking for one in the vale) I am not so sick, my bowel is still fairly disgruntled but its not as bad as it was,and the cramps have subsided, all i can really complain abotu is the total exhaustion, I am a zombie. And spotty, where they are zapping me i've developed a dodgy measles like rash. God, i am so super sexy aren't I? Poor Nic what did he marry?
urhg yuk tea has gone cold will havew to microwave it, out the window goes all pretence of sophistication, i was using a teapot and earl gray tea leaves and and a straner and eveything.

we heart the hoff

walking home, yes actually left the house to go some where other than radiotherapy, discovered legs still function. Anyway walked past minibus down the road, but not just any minibus "the david hasselhoff fan club 2005 tourbus" minibus, complete with pictures and a we heart the hoff banner across the front window. Couldn't not share this information with the world,if you want to witness this phenominon for yourself its on high street parked near dodgy house stuff shop.
Wow ho, no radiotherapy for three days, i love bank holiday weekend.

Radiotherapy should come with the warning "may cause excessive stroppiness and pissed off-ness." I am so stroppy, I'm permantIly pissed off with the world at large, i don't think i've beeen this angry since well ever, and if you don't know me, it would suffice to say i apitimised the angry teenager, fairly horendous behavour and adoleseent tantrums accompanied by the obligitory slightly disturbing taste in music etc. It may be that i am infact suffering from the culmination of all my repressed emotion from the last god knows how long bursting forth and reducing me to an angry or alternativley sobbing wreck. have to go and be ill, will finish later

i would like to stroke an okapi.

hello, lonng time no blog. Absolutly shattered. Radiotherapy is far from agreeing with me. I feel really sick for hours after each treatment, i have the worst diaroea ever in the history of the world, my scar is torte and saw. So i was more than grateful for today off. We went to bristol zoo to celebrate b. birthday. Splendid day, exhausted, but well worth it. Hated having to come back to stinking rubbish shit crappy bollocks cardiff. Need to move. Can't handle it any more. I'm thouroughly claustrafobic, feeling totally trapped in penarth, i hate walking down the street and seeing those people you don't want to talk to but have to, i hate walking down the street and seeing taht person you hate so much it makes you feel sick inside and not being able to escape their exsistence because you live in such a small town, i hate having family in this town that doesn't give a flying fuck about us and admittedly the feeling is reciprical, i mean my husband has family living down the road from us that i ve never even met. i've been here too long i need to move on.
rant over. i'm going to watch lost now and vomit......

Prahaps its not the radiotherapy that's making me ill, prahaps i'm just ill. I'm getting used to the big machine now as well, although it has to be said i wasn't chuffed at having to hang around for more than two bloody hous to have five minutes worth of treatment.
Something else, the art work in velindre radiotherapy department is awful, landscape stuff, slightly abstract although in a very restrainted way, and very welsh, all farmhouses in green green pastures, and fairly cheesy little comments in the corners. For the most part they're bleak as anything. There is one in paricular fam house in the back ground, barbed wire in the foreground, barren land in between and the text says something about bare breasts, which i found to be tottally in appriopiate I mean how many women sit it that waiting room, having just lost a breast about to under go a grueling amount of radiotherapy. They look up, this depressing monsteroserty of a painting which is on a subliminal level is screaming at them, you've got no breasts! You aren't a real women, you are the embodiment of this barren landscape you'r staring at, and they think fuck it thanks to that painting i've given up the will to live adn can't be arsed with radiotherapy. So a plea to all, donations of art to velindre radiology department would be a lovely idea, make it cheery and inspirational, nothing too grim. Much appricated.

absolutly nackered and a feeling a bit quesy

i have started radiotherapy. Its not herendous,but its not fun eitheir. they told me i wouldn't feel the effects for about a fourtnight, so how come i feel really sick. And tired. heres something that pissed me off today, i walk up to the radiology reception desk, which was doing a bloody good impression of a naf gift shop, and present myself, you know the drill, name, in this case machine number, time of appointment and apologises for being late, and instead of the typical "take a seat, you'll be called" the ladies, two of them retort, "she's not here yet" i enquire as to who who is, presuming they mean the radiologist but no, it is then established they mean Lorna Walton, well i was bloody there, stood right in front of them. Sorry for not looking ill, or being geriatric, because of course we all know only old people get cancer, next time i will where a fucking t-shirt with the word victim spralled across my breasts. You work in a cancer hospital, don't be so fucking ignorant. tired, can't be bothered any more, sex and the city beckons.

tired

i am absolutly shattered. Trekked around cosmeston(lakes, nature reseve dissused quarry) abit with the kids, but really don't deserve to be this tired. i guess its this recouperating thing again. apart from whinging about being tired i don't really have alot to say. start radiotherapy on monday,bit apprehensive, well shitting myself in fact. Grandma, who has had it phoned to say its nothing to worry about and not to be to scared.Finding pictures on internet of radiotherapy burns did nothing to help i must say. hey ho. have to go can type fpr yawning.

a numbers game

one in three of us will get cancer in our lifetime, so thats around about 33.3% chance that you personally will get cancer. The chances of my cancer reoccuring locally are some where between ten and fiteen percent and it returning to another site in my body is one to maybe five percent, so does that mean that teh chances of me developing cancer later in life have now in fact been reduced by this episode or do i add the two figures together leaving me wiht incresaed risk of reoccurance compared to your average healthy jo bloggs? Does my having had chance mean that two other people now have less chance of getting it or does it mean everyone has a microscopic decrease in their chances of contracting ti as i am helping to meet the quota? i am halfing my own odds by having radiotherapy, so does that leave me with a statistic of 5 to 8 percent or 24 percent and then add one for the fact that in one out of a hundred cases radiotherapy will in fact cause sarcomas? also i have to decide whether or not to have chemo and redudce my odds further. My head is going to explode, i'm rubbish at maths!

cancer blogs, and rich rust

I didn't realise i was one of many. A friend was looking for for my blog the other day and googled cancer's crap blog and numerous results appeared. Intruged i decided to foolow suit and have just discovered a whole world of cancer bloggers, admittedly some of these are related to medical sites or strange american companies pedalling health products but there are many people like me blogging abotu their own experience of cancer. I found one, which i will later create a link to (well, when chloe shows me how)that was heart wrenchingly moving and to my mind finominally brave. Rich Rust died of melonma cancer a year and a half ago leaving behind a very young daughter and pregnant wife, he blogged about his cancer and following his death his wife blogged about her grief. It is absolutly shattering to read. From reading a few lines and a very breif insight into who Rich Rust was,you know that he was brave, you know that he and his wife were very much in love, and you know that life cheated them. Cancer isn't just crap, its the biggest fucking bastard that ever there was. He writes casually and with humour, he has posted graphic images of his surgeries, not striking black and white shots like Gareth has done documenting my journey, colour snaps that should have laughing kids in them instead of brutal gut wrenching images of a man stapled up like frankenstien's monster. It's not fair, cancer is not fair. Cancer is indiscriminate in choosing its victims,it doesn't care it really doesn't give a fuck what kind of lifestyle you live, yes you are less likely to get lung cancer if you don't smoke but there's a million other types out there that can come knocking at your door. But its probably best not to smoke because then if you get cancer you have a whole heap of guilt to deal with as well. Rich's wife Deni asks don't they deserve a miracle? of course they do, it just doesn't work like that, thats one of the things that makes this so hard to deal with, the injustice of it all. Rich and Deni, you're so brave, but saying that sounds trite, and i know how hollow it sounds. When people tell me how brave they think i am,it just makes me think god you just don't fucking get it do you? its not about being brave its about getting up each morning and dealing with it, with the day to day monotony of having cancer,- appointments, kids, what to have for dinner, more appointments, hospital, kids, shopping, clean the house, don't think about it because if you do you think you might drown in your own despair, kids, more bloody appointments. You can't just stop when you get a diagnosis, everything carries on around you, and what else are you supposed to do but carry on? you can't stop swimming, you'll drown. Aside from Rich Rust i found another lady who was requesting evryones prayers and love in order to get her through her cancer, and it made me uncomfortable, but hey she is on the hardest journey and whatever gets you through the night.
When narrowing down the search i got a few search results for sarcoma blogs but none for fibromxyiod sarcomas, and in fact most cancer health sites don't have sarcoma info, let alone various types so prahaps i should use this space to educated people, it was the intial idea when starting this blog. To offer a little of the comfort i tried to find, by sharing my own experiences, which to a degree i've neglected to do. Tomorrow I will start at the beginning of my journey in the hope that my candid honesty will help some one else.