Side effects!

When you embark on any kind of medical treatment, you run the risk of suffering side effects. It gets fun when the doctors prescribe you something to counteract the side effects, then you get side effects from that medication, so they give you something for those side effects, which also has side effects etc etc. This happened to me when my first transplant was failing: I went from high blood pressure to diarrhoea via water retention and gout. Good times.

So anyway, I wasn't surprised when I was told that both chemotherapy and radiotherapy have side effects. There are the obvious ones, like sickness and diarrhoea, but there are also some unexpected ones, like a craving for artichokes and a sudden passion for tiddlywinks. OK, I made those ones up. But I was told that the chemo I'm taking can cause soreness on the palms of your hands and soles of your feet.

When I heard this, a subconscious, non-rational part of my brain responded thus: I have never heard of this and it sounds implausible, therefore it definitely won't happen to me.

A few days ago, my feet were hurting. I searched them for non-existent blisters. Had I developed amnesia and forgotten about attending a fire-walking event that went horribly wrong? 

I didn't clock a thing.

It was only when this crevasse opened up on my thumb that I realised the thing that definitely wasn't going to happen to me definitely was happening to me.

Lesion caused by movements in the tectonic hand plates, which are definitely a Thing and not something I just made up

I'd asked one of the radiotherapy staff about managing soreness (albeit in a rather different part of my body) and he'd suggested "double bass". I asked if he meant Diprobase. No, he said, and repeated the name of the recommended cream: double bass.

I've met a double bass. I'm not smearing one of those things up my crack.

My Facebook friends have recommended Diprobase or red-top Neutrogena (ie the full-fat version, as opposed to the semi-skimmed blue-top variety I have in my bedside drawer). So they're on this week's shopping list. 

I shan't bore you by telling you all the side effects I'm experiencing, but I will say this: buy shares in Imodium now. 

Cancer treatment begins and I may be a world record holder

Treatment started on Wednesday with a syringeful of chemotherapy solution. It was this colour - 

- which was nice, because it matched my cardi. 

Seriously, though, when someone puts something that colour in your veins, you know it's toxic. You just hope it's killing the right bits of you.

Afterwards, I headed downstairs with a bagful of chemotherapy tablets, to have my first radiotherapy session. And this is where my proud moment occurred.

The team will only give you pelvic radiotherapy if you have around 200ml of liquid in your bladder, so they make your drink about half a litre of water 45 minutes before you're due to get zapped. Before switching the rays on, they take a scan of the area, to check everything's as it ought to be. 

I lay on the bed/table, surrounded by space-age machinery. They scanned me. I waited.

Then I waited some more, passing the time by imagining that said machinery was going to put me in stasis so I could carry out a very important space mission.

Eventually, the nurse came through. 'Your bladder is ginormous,' she informed me. 'Do you think you could fill two cups of wee and come back?'

I told her I could. I have not had children, so - to steal a Victoria Wood quote - I have a pelvic floor like a bulldog clip. Stopping mid-flow? Pah! Piece of piss (almost literally).

When I returned, they showed me the scan. The screen was entirely filled by my bladder. However, when they plonked an ultrasound wand on me to check how much liquid was left in there, I still had around 800ml. One-and-a-half cups later and I was ready to go.

This means that, when I initially hopped on the bed, I had around 1.5 litres in there. I have a 2 litre bottle of Pepsi in the kitchen. The idea that I can hold 3/4 of that in my bladder makes me feel both proud and disturbed. HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE? It occurs to me that what I thought were my breasts are in fact the rest of my organs, shoved into my chest by a land-grabbing bladder. Whatever - I feel I ought to contact whoever took over from the McWhirter twins at the Guinness Book of Records and ask to be included in the next edition. 

Computer says no. Well, it might do. We haven't looked at it.

I was meant to be at the Tears for Fears / Alison Moyet gig at the O2 this evening.

The hospital called me yesterday, telling me I had to go in at 12.30 today to pick up my chemo tablets. It absolutely had to be today, they told me, because there were no other free appointments before I start radiotherapy. (You can’t just pick up your tablets. No, you have to have an appointment where you’re lectured for an hour on how to take them.)

I have very low energy to start with, so was concerned this might affect my ability to get to the gig. Also, I have to get up and go to the hospital tomorrow morning for 4 hours of blood tests. But I accepted the appointment. Of course I did.

I turned up at 12.30. My appointment was at 13.30.

I waited.

There were no tablets for me to pick up because the doctor hadn‘t written the prescription. And the reason for that is because they won’t know what dose to prescribe until I‘ve had the tests tomorrow WHICH THEY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN I WASN’T GOING TO HAVE UNTIL TOMORROW BECAUSE THAT INFORMATION WILL BE ON THEIR SYSTEM.

So I’m at home, instead of having a joyous time with musicians I loved back in the 80s.

Fuck cancer. And administrative incompetence.

And you'd like that tattoo where, Madam?

I knew I was going to have a tattoo before I started radiotherapy, so that the people with the ray guns would know where to attack.

Given where the cancer is, I thought the tattoo was going to be in a place that meant I would only be able to show it off if I:

1. learned to twerk in downward dog pose;
2. went clubbing;
3. with my pants off,

and that the tattooing process was going to be eye-watering.

It turned out that none of this was true. I am relieved and yet saddened by this loss of anticipated comic material. I have a tattoo at the top of each thigh and one, um, about half way between the two, on my [insert euphemism of choice]. They're not even interesting tattoos. I was hoping for Japanese symbols that I thought meant "serenity" but actually meant "wanker". They're just dots.

So, apart from the palaver of trying to get a cannula into me - nurse #1 failed and nurse #2 entered the room to find me furiously doing press-ups in an attempt to make my veins pop up - my CT scan and tattooing were unremarkable.

Radiotherapy starts on 13 February. It's all starting to feel a bit real now.