A safe port in the storm – Mum and Dad
September 2024 was the start of a flurry of positive action. To my very great relief the chemotherapy treatments started right away, with a long list of appointments and tests in the weeks that followed. All of these required ferry trips from my home on Vancouver Island to the BC Cancer Centre in the suburbs of Vancouver which made for a lot of traveling.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my parents for welcoming me into their home for overnight stays when required. Who says you can’t move back home in your 50’s? I tell you, a bowl of soup and a grilled cheese sandwich never tasted so good as it did in the safe haven of mum and dad’s place. Also, since my husband was usually holding the fort at home, going to work and being there for our teenage son, my dad came with me to many appointments. With his professionally honed listening skills and natural curiosity about all things medical (he has been a lifelong family doctor) I was in excellent company. When news comes at you fast and you sometimes feel like a deer in the headlights, having a quick-witted poppa bear and a notepad with you is pretty wonderful!
Testing, testing, testing…
As the days and weeks rolled by, I had appointments for a CT scan, bone scan, Holter monitor (for heart rhythms) and an echocardiogram. There were also appointments with my Oncologist, GP or NP Oncology specialists, a Radiation Oncologist, a breast surgeon and a plastic surgeon. The best news from all of this was finding out that although the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes, there was no evidence that the cancer had spread to anywhere else in my body. Whoopie!
The Holter monitor I mentioned was ordered because I found my heart racing several times per day, especially during exercise but also at random other times in the day. I took a shot of my smart watch when I was out hiking one day as an example. I never did see the report from this test, but I think it probably showed an irritable, easily upset heart – which was likely a sign of things to come.
Chemo gets started, too – one down, seven more to go
September 2024 also marked the start of my neoadjuvant chemotherapy – just a fancy word for “before surgery”. The plan was for eight treatment cycles with three weeks between each one. I had a prescription for oral anti-nausea drugs to take before treatments, and was glad to have that since I’d be traveling home by boat! One of the drugs was Doxorubicin, otherwise known as “the red devil”. It gets its name from the intense red colour of the drug. And yes, you guessed it – just like beets, it’s much the same colour when it leaves your body, too. It’s a good thing they warned me about this or I’d have been upset when I saw what seemed to be blood in the toilet!!
The intense low energy and moderate nausea didn’t hit until about 3 – 4 days later. Lightheaded when getting a drink from the kitchen, couldn’t stand up long enough to take a shower, just eating soft boiled eggs and not much else. This lasted about 3 – 5 days, longer and more intense with each new cycle.
Good-bye to bad hair days!
About two weeks after the first treatment, I started to lose my hair. It happens pretty quickly, over the space of a few days or up to a week. I held on for a couple of days, hoping if I didn’t brush it would take longer to fall out. But of course the shedding carried on and started to get messy with my shoulder length hair. So I took matters into my own hands one day and had a little hairdressing session, playing around with different looks as it got shorter and shorter. I know I would never have been brave enough to chop my hair off if cancer hadn’t forced the issue. So that’s another thing I’m grateful for… the opportunity to be pushed out of my comfort zone and realize that it’s totally ok.
I was pretty pleased with it by the time I got to the last one, until I turned around and realized I was pretty well down to my scalp at the back. Ho hum, that was a short lived pleasure… bring on the hats!
