I shaved my mum's hair off just now. She's gone in the shower & to decide if we need it on a shorter setting.
But I'm proud of her, and I'm proud of myself. Because do you know what, it is really, really hard to watch anyone going through cancer treatment, let alone your mother. Especially when she's your surviving parent. We might be going wig shopping tomorrow, but either way I think this is better. Cold cap be damned, maybe they work for some, but not this time.
She looks cute, and happier.
I love her so much.
Guest Starring:
- Louise
- Where nary a sense was made. A grubby ex-archaeology student, entrepreneur and pretender. Old enough to know better than to spend her days on social media, not busy enough to leave them behind. Looking to fill time and space with little bits of herself. And to become a conservator, obviously.
Tuesday, 26 November 2013
Wednesday, 20 November 2013
Cancer is a major downer
As if we didn't know that already.
My mum had her second session of chemotherapy today, so she was out from 11am till 5pm. I cleaned the bathroom, had a nap because I knew the person I was meeting for drinks was gonna bail on me, and then went into Wakefield to make an appointment to get more pills & also to go buy more running tights and hit the gym.
Now I'm home, and mum is sad and feels very sick. She's brought home a host of pills, anti-emetics, pain-killers and laxatives, to combat the ills that the chemotherapy is doing. I'm sat on my own now watching The English Patient, she's gone to bed after eating quarter of a jacket potato and a sip of water. With a bucket, and a towel on the floor by her bed.
When I got back from the gym she was sat on the sofa, crying. "I couldn't keep the cold cap on, I was cold to my bones. I couldn't keep it on. I couldn't keep it on." Her hair is going... going... Who knows how much longer she'll have it, what an awful, terrifying ordeal. I suppose it's the last reserve of normality before people start to know categorically that something's amiss. A wig might look like hair, but hair it isn't. Poor mama.
I have a terrible feeling of dread in my chest, a headache that will not budge and a nasty case of the sads. I am entirely aware that the latter is probably the root cause of the former.
I've no desire to do anything.
And the T.V remote has gone missing. To top it off.
My mum had her second session of chemotherapy today, so she was out from 11am till 5pm. I cleaned the bathroom, had a nap because I knew the person I was meeting for drinks was gonna bail on me, and then went into Wakefield to make an appointment to get more pills & also to go buy more running tights and hit the gym.
Now I'm home, and mum is sad and feels very sick. She's brought home a host of pills, anti-emetics, pain-killers and laxatives, to combat the ills that the chemotherapy is doing. I'm sat on my own now watching The English Patient, she's gone to bed after eating quarter of a jacket potato and a sip of water. With a bucket, and a towel on the floor by her bed.
When I got back from the gym she was sat on the sofa, crying. "I couldn't keep the cold cap on, I was cold to my bones. I couldn't keep it on. I couldn't keep it on." Her hair is going... going... Who knows how much longer she'll have it, what an awful, terrifying ordeal. I suppose it's the last reserve of normality before people start to know categorically that something's amiss. A wig might look like hair, but hair it isn't. Poor mama.
I have a terrible feeling of dread in my chest, a headache that will not budge and a nasty case of the sads. I am entirely aware that the latter is probably the root cause of the former.
I've no desire to do anything.
And the T.V remote has gone missing. To top it off.
Monday, 18 November 2013
Please help..
I was searching for other bloggers going through the same thing and I stumbled onto all kinds of information about chemotherapy backfiring and boosting cancer growth & the amount oncologists are paid & chemotherapy resistance & the increase in survival rate only being an extra 3% in node-negative breast cancer.
Fuck.
Fuck.
This Wednesday is chemo-day...
If I'm honest, this has not been so bad. I probably mentioned in my last post that Momma hadn't been feeling too hot about the whole thing- insofar as she'd spent four days wanting and not-wanting to puke up her guts. I guess that's the thing about taking highly poisonous medicines; your body really doesn't want them in there.
Her piss was red for the first day, something she attributed to the dye in the drugs (which apparently were the most noxious vibrant red colour- just in case the whole experience wasn't awful enough already) and she was very tired. Don't get me wrong, we are a family of nappers. We loves a good ol' bit of shut eye. But I'm talking forty minutes of forty winks every other hour, and then a 8:30pm bedtime which is unheard of, because we like to sit up and watch trash T.V like Phil Spencer: Secret Agent and Gordon Ramsay's Hotel Hell.
After four days of that she seemed largely okay again, certainly more perky. She told me just this week (well, she told my Great Grandma and I overheard) that she'd just felt like someone had sucked all the energy out of her and I can completely understand that because looking at it from the other side that's how she seemed. But we've been okay since then.
We've lunched out, we've brunched, we've spent 6 hours shopping. It's been pretty standard as our lives go actually, except she keeps making these awkward jokes about going bald & "Well, things can't be much worse." Of course, they could be; it just doesn't really seem that way sometimes. Some people really do get all the luck.
The bald jokes were kind of amusing up till Wednesday just gone; when, in spite of the cold cap she wore for four hours cooling her poor noodle to a chilly -30c, her hair started to come out. It hasn't come out in chunks, oh no. It's a slower, more tender death than that. Whenever she touches her hair a smattering of about 20 hairs come away. She's not tugging them out, and despite all my pleadings she goes on running her fingers through her thinning locks, teasing out the hair that had already formed before her follicles bit the dust, where the end of this last burst of growth reaches the other side of the scalp.
Tonight she says, all nonchalant, "After Callum's parents evening tomorrow, I want you to shave my hair off."
I'm mortified, my mum has hair, she's always had hair. She'll always have hair, won't she?
The answer of course is no. If she's not moidered it into submission by Friday, the dose of chemo she gets in 2 days time will undoubtedly finish it off by the start of December. My poor beautiful mama, bald as an egg. I can't begin to fathom it, I mean obviously it's happening. The little piles of brown hair around the house tell me it's happening, but that doesn't mean it's any more real.
We keep joking about hats, but I don't want her to have to wear a hat. I want her to have her lovely, thick hair.
I think if I started crying properly, I wouldn't stop till I was desiccated and embalmed in my own tears; how ludicrous. It's not even my hair. I don't think I even want my hair any more, if I could cut & paste it onto her I would in a heartbeat. I've been researching having it made into a wig, and it'd cost all my savings but to help her it'd be so worth it. Who gives a shit about 2k, you can earn that back no problem. She can't earn her hair back, and it can't even try to grow back for another 5 months.
The lump in my oesophagus is back, it feels like I've swallowed my own fist. It's not something even the super-strength anti-indigestion tablets she's been prescribed can fix (yay more side effects of making her better, giving her rampant acid reflux and heartburn!)
But you know what, it could be worse and it isn't. And I've no right to be sitting around weeping when she's championing being poisoned for the sake of her wellbeing. So I've got to keep schtum, and be brave, no weeping children welcome here.
Poor mama.
Her piss was red for the first day, something she attributed to the dye in the drugs (which apparently were the most noxious vibrant red colour- just in case the whole experience wasn't awful enough already) and she was very tired. Don't get me wrong, we are a family of nappers. We loves a good ol' bit of shut eye. But I'm talking forty minutes of forty winks every other hour, and then a 8:30pm bedtime which is unheard of, because we like to sit up and watch trash T.V like Phil Spencer: Secret Agent and Gordon Ramsay's Hotel Hell.
After four days of that she seemed largely okay again, certainly more perky. She told me just this week (well, she told my Great Grandma and I overheard) that she'd just felt like someone had sucked all the energy out of her and I can completely understand that because looking at it from the other side that's how she seemed. But we've been okay since then.
We've lunched out, we've brunched, we've spent 6 hours shopping. It's been pretty standard as our lives go actually, except she keeps making these awkward jokes about going bald & "Well, things can't be much worse." Of course, they could be; it just doesn't really seem that way sometimes. Some people really do get all the luck.
The bald jokes were kind of amusing up till Wednesday just gone; when, in spite of the cold cap she wore for four hours cooling her poor noodle to a chilly -30c, her hair started to come out. It hasn't come out in chunks, oh no. It's a slower, more tender death than that. Whenever she touches her hair a smattering of about 20 hairs come away. She's not tugging them out, and despite all my pleadings she goes on running her fingers through her thinning locks, teasing out the hair that had already formed before her follicles bit the dust, where the end of this last burst of growth reaches the other side of the scalp.
Tonight she says, all nonchalant, "After Callum's parents evening tomorrow, I want you to shave my hair off."
I'm mortified, my mum has hair, she's always had hair. She'll always have hair, won't she?
The answer of course is no. If she's not moidered it into submission by Friday, the dose of chemo she gets in 2 days time will undoubtedly finish it off by the start of December. My poor beautiful mama, bald as an egg. I can't begin to fathom it, I mean obviously it's happening. The little piles of brown hair around the house tell me it's happening, but that doesn't mean it's any more real.
We keep joking about hats, but I don't want her to have to wear a hat. I want her to have her lovely, thick hair.
I think if I started crying properly, I wouldn't stop till I was desiccated and embalmed in my own tears; how ludicrous. It's not even my hair. I don't think I even want my hair any more, if I could cut & paste it onto her I would in a heartbeat. I've been researching having it made into a wig, and it'd cost all my savings but to help her it'd be so worth it. Who gives a shit about 2k, you can earn that back no problem. She can't earn her hair back, and it can't even try to grow back for another 5 months.
The lump in my oesophagus is back, it feels like I've swallowed my own fist. It's not something even the super-strength anti-indigestion tablets she's been prescribed can fix (yay more side effects of making her better, giving her rampant acid reflux and heartburn!)
But you know what, it could be worse and it isn't. And I've no right to be sitting around weeping when she's championing being poisoned for the sake of her wellbeing. So I've got to keep schtum, and be brave, no weeping children welcome here.
Poor mama.
Friday, 1 November 2013
First few days post-chemo
Oh I was miserable on Wednesday, of course I was working a full 10.5 hour day so I got a little separation anxiety. Something I've been experiencing quite horribly since this whole thing started.
I cried on the bus to work a little. I sniffled as I shuffled my way through the dewy verge at the bus stop into the laundry room. I encountered colleagues who commented that I looked ill- something else which seems to have increased in frequency since my mum's diagnosis.
Poor momma, all alone and being injected with toxic drugs. Poor momma, sat freezing in her cold cap in an attempt to keep her lovely hair. And there I am at work, chatting with colleagues, laughing with customers, bustling about my day as normal.
Except not as normal, not to say my day was a fraction of the trauma of actually being put through chemotherapy, but the mental, physical and emotional drain that I myself was feeling was not a trifling thing. But to slash the risks of returning cancer then living through this is little beans.
Bless her, she's not felt very well since having the chemotherapy. Despite having to take a coffer of anti-sickness medications every day she says she feels hungover. And amen sister, we've all been there. Except in this case she hasn't been partying hard and having fun at all. Instead she's already been put through four months of hell, 2 months of post-surgery recuperation and a myriad of medical professional disappointments. She took to bed today after picking me up from work, I think I'm going to have to take getting to work into my own hands, either I work hours that fit my bus timetables (preferably shorter so I can be at home with her, making sure she hasn't fallen into a septic coma I think it's called...) But being laid up stresses her out, she's no mover and shaker, but no-one likes to be in bed because they have to be, it's the ultimate house arrest with a life-threatening disease thrown in for laughs.
Christ it's depressing.
No, I didn't go to the doctors, I figured there's nothing really wrong with me, except I'm a little sissy cry-baby who faints when she stares at the till too hard, shame that's my job I guess but I'm sure it'll work out just fine.
And I'm emotionally binge-eating. I can't go into details really, except I know I'm doing it and it must be taking me well over a healthy 2000kcal maximum intake per day. But I've recognised it, and tomorrow is different.
Here's hoping that my mum doesn't feel too shocking (considering she's been professionally poisoned) and that she's not lonely during the day; and also that I don't have any particularly dire customers, don't pass out at the till and most importantly at the moment- don't overeat.
I cried on the bus to work a little. I sniffled as I shuffled my way through the dewy verge at the bus stop into the laundry room. I encountered colleagues who commented that I looked ill- something else which seems to have increased in frequency since my mum's diagnosis.
Poor momma, all alone and being injected with toxic drugs. Poor momma, sat freezing in her cold cap in an attempt to keep her lovely hair. And there I am at work, chatting with colleagues, laughing with customers, bustling about my day as normal.
Except not as normal, not to say my day was a fraction of the trauma of actually being put through chemotherapy, but the mental, physical and emotional drain that I myself was feeling was not a trifling thing. But to slash the risks of returning cancer then living through this is little beans.
Bless her, she's not felt very well since having the chemotherapy. Despite having to take a coffer of anti-sickness medications every day she says she feels hungover. And amen sister, we've all been there. Except in this case she hasn't been partying hard and having fun at all. Instead she's already been put through four months of hell, 2 months of post-surgery recuperation and a myriad of medical professional disappointments. She took to bed today after picking me up from work, I think I'm going to have to take getting to work into my own hands, either I work hours that fit my bus timetables (preferably shorter so I can be at home with her, making sure she hasn't fallen into a septic coma I think it's called...) But being laid up stresses her out, she's no mover and shaker, but no-one likes to be in bed because they have to be, it's the ultimate house arrest with a life-threatening disease thrown in for laughs.
Christ it's depressing.
No, I didn't go to the doctors, I figured there's nothing really wrong with me, except I'm a little sissy cry-baby who faints when she stares at the till too hard, shame that's my job I guess but I'm sure it'll work out just fine.
And I'm emotionally binge-eating. I can't go into details really, except I know I'm doing it and it must be taking me well over a healthy 2000kcal maximum intake per day. But I've recognised it, and tomorrow is different.
Here's hoping that my mum doesn't feel too shocking (considering she's been professionally poisoned) and that she's not lonely during the day; and also that I don't have any particularly dire customers, don't pass out at the till and most importantly at the moment- don't overeat.
Sunday, 27 October 2013
The other thing...
Is that I keep having things I call "funny turns" at work. Which is basically where one minute I'll be bustling round restocking, working the till, chatting with colleagues generally having a good time when all of a sudden I become aware of an unusual or particularly strong smell, and then my vision starts to go, and then my hearing, my balance, my ability to arrange thoughts and articulate sentences and then my consciousness.
It's happened three times. I went to the walk-in centre, apparently my blood sugar is okay and my blood pressure and heart rate too.
Whilst some people would find this reassuring, the fact still remains that I keep trancing out, so I was advised to go to the doctor's, which I can't until Thursday. And I'm scared that something's really wrong.
My colleagues didn't help me by clamouring about epilepsy and diabetes, but two of them have now said that it's like epilepsy, one saw it happen and both her cousin and brother have epilepsy so she looked almost as shaken up as me. And the other who I told about it said it sounds very like epilepsy, she would know too, her father has it.
It's happened three times. I went to the walk-in centre, apparently my blood sugar is okay and my blood pressure and heart rate too.
Whilst some people would find this reassuring, the fact still remains that I keep trancing out, so I was advised to go to the doctor's, which I can't until Thursday. And I'm scared that something's really wrong.
My colleagues didn't help me by clamouring about epilepsy and diabetes, but two of them have now said that it's like epilepsy, one saw it happen and both her cousin and brother have epilepsy so she looked almost as shaken up as me. And the other who I told about it said it sounds very like epilepsy, she would know too, her father has it.
To say I'm very average I'm really having quite a shitty time at the moment
There are a couple of issues in my life, and one pivotal, ongoing happenstance that I've not told any friends about, but a) I don't think anyone has subscribed to this blog and b) it's happening now whether I want it to or not.
My mother has had breast cancer. She told me about this 2 days before my 21st birthday, and we cut short our annual Cornish holiday to have the confirmation of something the doctors were already 90% sure of. The continuing treatment and consequent recoveries have been somewhat of a roller coaster ride.
The lumpectomy made my mother quite ill, and turned her blue. I took a day off work, I don't know whether this was a mistake or not, being at home on my own not knowing what was going on was hellish. But I imagine that had a been off work that I would have still been upset, and unproductive. Someone might have even asked what was wrong and anyone who really knows me is aware that such a question really heralds the end of my composure full stop.
Either way I stayed at home. Cryoning. It's crying and ironing at the same time, I was quite pleased with the term.
So aside from being scared to fuck all day, she then had to tell immediate family in the evening, so some of them came over and selfish as it is, people are just a constant reminder and I hate them. It, sorry, I hate it.
Anyway, as the doctor's cheerfully told her "you don't have cancer any more" I thought we could expel a little of the breath we'd been holding for the past month and a half, even though further biopsy results got postponed.
Results which changed things again. "Could you fetch the surgery consent forms please?" that's how she found out she had to have a mastectomy. Cue further emotional breakdowns.
The mastectomy was a day case which my auntie came up from Cornwall to accompany my mum to. I can't complain too much- because for the most part I reckon the NHS must have been pretty superb- but for the surgeon who was meant to check on her before she could be released from hospital (because apparently mastectomies are day cases now...) went walkabout and so despite having her op first, she didn't get home until 8pm by which point I'd been alone for 12hours.
I won't lie, it's a strange and scary thing to have your mom come home minus one breast with a bottle of bloody biofluids tied round her waist with a dressing gown cord. A drain that would later disconnect and spurt blood all over the kitchen for me to deal with and clean up, such fun.
She is all healed up now though. And got told last week what further treatment she'd require.
As it happens it's the full works, of course it is. That's chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hormone replacement therapy in case you were curious. And I'm still petrified in almost the purest sense of the word, sometimes I'm so fearful about what the future entails for the three of us that I can't move, I can't breathe, I can't eat & I can't sleep.
Both my boyfriend's mother, and my best friend's mother (who were born on the same day now I think about it) died of cancer when they were just a little older than I was when my dad died. So I can't talk to them about it, because they don't need reminding of cancer and it's penetrating effects any more than I do.
I think, apart from the fact that my mum is going through this awful experience that we all know is going to make her unwell, is that my family seem to think that for some reason I'm missing out on understanding this. How many times could you be told "She's going to be really very poorly" "You'll have to take care of her, she's going to be quite ill" "You know how sick this will make your mum, don't you?" without ceasing to want to speak to anyone about it?
So as it continues I feel more, not less isolated. My mum's going through this and I'm sat feeling sorry for myself, writing about it online. I sicken myself.
My mother has had breast cancer. She told me about this 2 days before my 21st birthday, and we cut short our annual Cornish holiday to have the confirmation of something the doctors were already 90% sure of. The continuing treatment and consequent recoveries have been somewhat of a roller coaster ride.
The lumpectomy made my mother quite ill, and turned her blue. I took a day off work, I don't know whether this was a mistake or not, being at home on my own not knowing what was going on was hellish. But I imagine that had a been off work that I would have still been upset, and unproductive. Someone might have even asked what was wrong and anyone who really knows me is aware that such a question really heralds the end of my composure full stop.
Either way I stayed at home. Cryoning. It's crying and ironing at the same time, I was quite pleased with the term.
So aside from being scared to fuck all day, she then had to tell immediate family in the evening, so some of them came over and selfish as it is, people are just a constant reminder and I hate them. It, sorry, I hate it.
Anyway, as the doctor's cheerfully told her "you don't have cancer any more" I thought we could expel a little of the breath we'd been holding for the past month and a half, even though further biopsy results got postponed.
Results which changed things again. "Could you fetch the surgery consent forms please?" that's how she found out she had to have a mastectomy. Cue further emotional breakdowns.
The mastectomy was a day case which my auntie came up from Cornwall to accompany my mum to. I can't complain too much- because for the most part I reckon the NHS must have been pretty superb- but for the surgeon who was meant to check on her before she could be released from hospital (because apparently mastectomies are day cases now...) went walkabout and so despite having her op first, she didn't get home until 8pm by which point I'd been alone for 12hours.
I won't lie, it's a strange and scary thing to have your mom come home minus one breast with a bottle of bloody biofluids tied round her waist with a dressing gown cord. A drain that would later disconnect and spurt blood all over the kitchen for me to deal with and clean up, such fun.
She is all healed up now though. And got told last week what further treatment she'd require.
As it happens it's the full works, of course it is. That's chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hormone replacement therapy in case you were curious. And I'm still petrified in almost the purest sense of the word, sometimes I'm so fearful about what the future entails for the three of us that I can't move, I can't breathe, I can't eat & I can't sleep.
Both my boyfriend's mother, and my best friend's mother (who were born on the same day now I think about it) died of cancer when they were just a little older than I was when my dad died. So I can't talk to them about it, because they don't need reminding of cancer and it's penetrating effects any more than I do.
I think, apart from the fact that my mum is going through this awful experience that we all know is going to make her unwell, is that my family seem to think that for some reason I'm missing out on understanding this. How many times could you be told "She's going to be really very poorly" "You'll have to take care of her, she's going to be quite ill" "You know how sick this will make your mum, don't you?" without ceasing to want to speak to anyone about it?
So as it continues I feel more, not less isolated. My mum's going through this and I'm sat feeling sorry for myself, writing about it online. I sicken myself.
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