Victor Meldrew has nothing on me.....

Bored, bored, bored.

Fed up. Cross and irritable. Finding it hard to be funny about The Thing right now.......

I know the chequered flag is in sight - only 4 more weeks to go - but it feels like (I have to imagine this, obviously, having never run more than a mile at one go in my life) the last few miles of a marathon; I just want it to be over and every step feels like a mile, because of everything that we have already done. Wanting to sprint and get it finished but can't - instead knowing there is still a long slow painful slog to get to the end.

OK - enough of the sporting analogies....

It doesn't help that the last cycle is utterly grim - Papa Smurf announces that my White Blood Cell count (the ones that fight infection) is low, so I am given two injections to take over the week to boost them back up. We have long suspected that it is these injections that actually give me the majority of my side effects - the one week I didn't have to have the jab I had no symptoms at all - but boy is this confirmed.

After the first injection, I get the normal bleugh hangover feeling - nothing new. The day after the second injection, I wake up feeling as if my whole body is made from mercury, sloshing around inside my skin and skull - and if I move anything or use my brain at all, I feel sick. I throw up when moving to go to the loo, when trying to entertain myself by looking at a book and when calling J at work to ask him to come home. It is a deeply deeply unpleasant experience - I feel trapped in my body with no way of occupying my mind - can't talk, read, watch tv, eat, sleep, listen to music - and just have to lie in bed feeling sick and sorry for myself. I have so much more sympathy for those little old ladies who can't see or hear (and are impossible to buy Xmas presents for) - it is enough to send you completely out of your mind.

I finally remember reading - those online forums again - about Clarityn helping reactions to this shot, and decide that it can't hurt (given that we have some in the medicine cupboard). I take one and manage to keep it down, followed by a painkiller which also stays down. Amazingly, after an hour, I start to feel human again - and by the next morning I am totally back to myself. Today in the Den I'll discuss this with Papa Smurf and we can decide what to do this week; I do NOT want to go through that again.

But so you don't all think I am about to string myself up - I'm really not. It is the strangest thing that the symptoms seem to have an on/off switch. Either I feel crap, or I feel absolutely fine - there is no halfway. So yesterday, lovely lunch out with girlfriends (actually High Tea starting at 11:30 with lots of puddings - heaven); today, well, back to the Den, but then there will only be 3 more to go........

Hair news - less peach fuzz now, and more mouldy bread (according to my beloved). I think that's a step forward, but hard to be sure. Annoyingly, it is almost completely see through, so not doing a great job yet of covering my baldness - if it was darker, it would be a reasonable covering by now! Its also sticking out completely straight at right angles to my head - in the manner of a cartoon character who has put their finger in a socket. I still love it (athough Papa Smurf rained on my parade last week by telling me it would all fall out - I am choosing not to believe her) and have become a habitual head stroker - its just sooo soft, like having a hamster on my head.

Am trying to measure the length - it's tricky - but I'd say more than half a centimetre and definitely growing and thickening.

Body hair also returning straight and blonde. Maybe ALL my new hair is going to be straight and blonde? What a fab bonus that would be........

As zen-like and serene as ever, J xx

Hair again....

I have hair! I am sadly over-excited by my 3mm of peach fuzz, although it is almost totally white, it is so soft, like a kind of dandelion clock all round my head. AND it is actually growing (but sooooooooo slowly - and believe me, I check progress daily) and not falling out.

Both kids tell me today that my hair is getting really long. Bless them - they are big on encouragement - and don't see the irony in calling 3mm "long". I really hope it doesn't stay perfectly white - but all hair is good hair, and that's what dye is for...... I even shave my legs this week, and get excited by that too. I will try never to moan about hair removal ever again.

I am so carried away by my new fuzz that I totally forget to wear any hair when we go down for dinner at Riders Lodge in Malaysia - I suddenly remember as we turn to head to the dinning room and have to leg it, giggling hysterically, back to our room, followed by the kids and J - we all weep til our sides hurt and then return to dinner. I don't think anyone notices - they are all too polite and kind to mention it if they do.

This week I have number 7 of 12 treatments - only 5 more to go.

Papa Smurf tells me that when it's all over, she wants me to keep the port in for another two years if possible, in case I need it again. A rather stark reminder (which I don't need) that there is a possibility of The Thing - part 2.

I know she is just being practical, and we would feel silly having to go through another operation on top of everything else if the worst should happen, but still....... This is the thing with The Thing - you can spend weeks assuming you've beaten the bugger, and then one comment like that, or one discussion about "improving your chances of survival", and you are firmly put back in your place and reminded that this is something to live with forever - it's never "over". And that's crap.

This comment, along with "chemo brain" and chemically induced menopause, club together this week to create the perfect storm (at 3am, of course) when I lose it totally and J spends 3 hours in the middle of the night talking me back down. I sob and rant, and he listens and holds, and we get through it. I think perhaps I have been holding it all in a tiny bit (repressed? me?) but believe me, it's all out now and I feel so much better for it.

Chemo brain is a well documented side effect - and means I struggle to remember names of things, and also lack the mental agility I normally have, to solve problems, fix things etc. It's all totally chemical, and is immediately reversed once the drugs are stopped, but I hate it. I have to learn to let go - and ask J to do things I can't (and accept that, for a bit, there ARE things I can't do) - not really my style, so could be an interesting learning experience..........

And Singapore is NO place to be having a hot flush. Also possibly/probably (40/60) reversible - we have to wait and see.

Onwards and upwards...

As zen-like and serene as ever, J xx