Well, it’s been a blast, thank you you smashing little chemo drugs.  I have to admit I have been knocked sideways this week.

I actually had felt as though I was on the front foot, after all I had a head start in terms of knowledge, side effects, terminology, appointment schedules, etc.  We have just been through six months of diagnosis and treatment with Papa’s lymphoma (that’s my Dad by the way, and moving forward, if you see reference to ‘Gaggy’ that’s my Mum – it’s what Joe called them when he was finding his vocal cords as a baby – and they’ve stuck).

Well, there I was waiting for some feelings of nausea and tiredness, I had my super special anti-sickness drugs at the ready, and then… wham!  Five hours after leaving the chemo suite I felt VERY sick and then two hours later I developed a very close bond with the loo… for the next 36 hours.  The thing is, I’ll take my experience over Papa’s any day, he felt constantly nauseous, like a three week hangover, he could barely eat.  At least mine was done and dusted (albeit dramatically) in a couple of days.

Anyway, its a good way to detox – 4 days later – 5lbs lighter and I’m back on the food again.

Now the infamous ‘Chemo Brain’ has kicked in.  Papa went on about this for ages, we almost lost patience, we couldn’t work out what he was going on about.  The Macmillan nurses talked about it.  Now I understand.  It’s a strange feeling of wooziness, sometimes I feel as though my eyes aren’t connected to my head, it took me half an hour to write a 10 line email today – I knew what I wanted to write but just couldn’t get the spellings and grammar right.

I’m waiting for the supposed dip in energy as I stopped taking the steroids yesterday… so far today the dog has been walked twice, I’ve done some work and been to Tesco’s… still waiting…

All the above proves a point which the consultants have stated – everyone’s cancer is different and everyone’s treatment is so very cleverly devised and tweaked just for them by those remarkable scientists and their microscopes (and probably lots of other science-y type of things!) when they get their mitts on the biopsies.  There’s just no knowing how it will effect each of us.

It’s like having a personal shopper, except you get a whole new life not just a new outfit.