Friday 31st August 2007; 9am sharp and equipped with the biggest darkest shopping bags you have ever seen under my eyes, my mum and I arrived at the chemo day unit and was immediately told that I needed to go back downstairs to have some more bloods done. My blood tests from Tuesday showed that my white blood cells hadn’t recovered well enough for me to have my chemo, so off we trotted for me to get stabbed by an additional needle, that I didn’t think I'd have today, bloody hell, the cannula needle is enough for anyone. As instructed I informed the blood taking nurse that the chemo day unit needed the results ASAP. Once this was done my mum and I had to go back upstairs and wait in the waiting room, hoping that my blood work was good enough to have my chemo done today.
We sat there watching everyone come and go. It’s weird isn’t it? You don’t want chemo and yet when you think there is a chance that you might not be able to have it, you get all worked up cos you do want it. It’s the typical saying that you always want what you can’t have. Anyway after sitting around for 3 hours, a nurse came in to tell me that my bloods were fine and she was just waiting for my oncologist to sign off the paperwork to say that he was happy for the pharmacy to make up the chemo. Whoopy doo, I can have my chemo! “How long will that take?” I asked. I knew as soon as I had opened my mouth that I shouldn’t have asked, cos now I’m bored, thinking about being bored as the answer was a typical “As soon as the pharmacy make it up and gets it up to us”. Arghh now if I had some hair I would be pulling it out because what I have learnt about the hospital pharmacy is that you can be waiting an hour just to get one bloody Aspirin.
My mum and I decided to have a walk about outside to get a bit of fresh air, and have a sneaky fag, we ate our sandwiches while sat on a small wall in the sun just outside the doorway and then after a good half an hour went back upstairs to see if there was any sign of my chemo yet. Yeah I was being a little bit optimistic, I knew this was going to be a long long wait.
Another couple of hours and more cups of coffee, a packet of crisps and a chocolate bar later, a nurse came in and told me that my chemo still hadn’t been made up yet. I was so tired and uncomfortable, my mum and I looked at each other and I was about to say to her “Were guna be here all day and all night at this rate” when the nurse went on to say that I couldn’t have my chemo now, 'What!!' No chemo?, I'd been sat here all th is time and now they tell me I can't have my frickin chemo' apparantly Not. Because this chemo was gong to take a minimum of 4 hours, there wouldn’t be enough time to administer it, as we were still looking at another couple of hours waiting to get me started. We had been sat there for 6 hours, my arse was numb, I was high on frickin steroids andNOW they tell me to go home, I was so bloody annoyed. What a waste of a day, you see I am learning fast that on good days, to make the most of it, cram as much as possible in, and not waste them on sitting around in bloody hospital waiting rooms.
Another appointment was made for me to go back and have my chemo on Monday at 2pm, which I have been assured that I would get started immediately.
What a day! I am disappointed because I don’t want any delays with my chemo, I feel that by being late with it, it's giving my squatters chance to multiply again and its times like this I just wish they could cut it all out now and be done with it. I have been told to take my steroids again on Sunday which means I will have to take my first ones at 2am and then the next dose at 8am, so I think if I get to bed early then at least I can have a good sleep prior to my alarm clock going off.
My mum’s plans were that she was going to go back home in the morning but she has decided to stay longer so that she can still take me to my chemo and Lee won’t have to take a day off work. You see a positive out of every negative, just a shame my chemo has to be postponed just so I can get my mum to stay longer.
Saturday/Sunday; The weekend has been such a lovely weekend, to have my mum here for the time has been great, and I bet we have sent poor Lee deaf, having to sit there and endure our full speed Yorkshire slang gossiping mode, we did try and give him some peace and ventured into the city center to do a bit of shopping and as always my mum and I had a giggle trying on clothes, even though I came back empty handed but mum; well that is a different story as she can never go to the shops without buying something or other. When faced with a life threatening disease you start to dissect your life and look at what is important, I have started to do that, I have started to appreciate the little things in life that before I just took for granted that they would always be there, or that they were too small to be noticed. I was wrong, I have been wrong about a lot of things. Coming from a modeling background, I thought looks were important, but they are not, that is just vanity and the whole world seems to put that much pressure on how we look that vanity has got way out of control. It’s what’s within us that’s important, our personalities, not what our hair looks like or if my bottom looks big. I have no hair and my bottom has filled out to the point that it is now exploding out of my larger than normal clothes but I am happy. I am still smiling and laughing and for the first time in my life, I have now seen that humour is a great healer. If you feel sad, then the sadness can over take you, if you feel ill and get uptight about it, the iller you will become. If you feel ill, but try and laugh about it, make it into a joke like Lee has done with me, it makes you feel better and the better you feel, the less ill you feel. Without the humour that Lee and my family have brought into this tough time, I honestly don’t think that I could have been strong enough to get as far as I have with this diagnosis of breast cancer.
On Sunday evening I decided to take a sleeping tablet even though I needed to wake up at 2am to take the steroids. I just want some good sleep and with the sleeping tablets, I felt I could fall back to sleep after taking the steroids without any effort. Did it work, too bloody right it worked, I slept like sleeping beauty, without the lovely hair, it worked so great that I can’t even remember taking my steroids and the only evidence was the empty glass of water at the side of my bed and the bumper load of steroids that were absent from the little container.
