Hi a tip i was given re bandanas rather than buying online, check out your Macmillan team they often have a great selection at very reduced prices, mine were all under a £10, and great styles and colours.
Re the wig i Never got to use my wig, I stuck with Cold cap, I didn’t have the luxury of cold gloves or placing feet in an ice bucket. I’d wish we knew about keeping your feet cold as i now suffer from the numbness.
And ladies don’t be too quick to cut your hair, I lost 50% of my plenty of very fine hair, but not the lot, and its grown back thicker and stronger, I now have curls, some ladies even say the colour changes. Please be patient.
The time goes by if you chat with fellow patients or the nurses. For the latter parts though i just went to sleep under my blanket. YHou will soon get through it and you now have the summer to look forward to. Love and hugs. Moonsox. PS I’m 2 years the other side.
Very sorry for your loss - that’s terribly sad. Thinking of you. Xxx
Best of luck you too! Eager to get started at this stage. Been a long wait!
@ivy-cat Thank you so much, how kind of you to remember 
Although it’s nice to have an idea about the process now, it’s also making me much more anxious about it 
Still it will be another one done, so I need to focus on that 
Wow how lucky, yes it would appear this is a berkshire only, I’m Manchester area and didn’t get this, I didget many of the items recommended by a former patient to have with me, certainly the blanket. Our nurses offered us a brew…
it will soon be another one down xxDay 6 for me since first EC and not good at all today. On day 4, spent 4 hours in A&E after calling hotline where they did lots of tests and heart-checking and xrays but they were overall happy and sent me home with extra meds for side effects. I’m really struggling 
I can’t imagine another day of this let alone another 17 weeks. Send me some positivity please!
I’m so sorry to hear how much you are struggling @isthisreal. You are definitely in the worst phase of it now - on day 6 I had such bad indigestion that it made me sweat so much I had to strip off. Now that I am in week 3 - day 15 and not on any meds, I finally feel almost normal. You will get through it but it is super tough and when you’re dealing with it you feel as though you’ve got a mountain to climb x
sending some sparkles of positivity your way 
Shi xx
@isthisreal Hang in there, it will get better 
I talked to the nurse about how surprised I was to feel the worst between Days 6 & 10 and she explained to met that this is your body having been brought down by the chemo but not yet benefitting from the injections to boost the white blood cells. Your body is working super hard to produce them so can’t process the other effects too. It made sense to me (she definitely explained it better than me 
) so I’m re-setting my expectations for cycle 2.
Go easy on yourself 
Cycle 2 completed 
I was quite scared about today but I’m pleased to say that the paracetamol and headband did the trick - cold cap not as horrible as last time so thank you all for your advice!
Bit more sleepy today than last time, but it’s raining so….
My son came to stay for the past few nights which was lovely. I’ve been worried that he’s not dealing with my situation very well so I wanted him to see it’s okay for him to worry about me but we can get through this together. Not sure if that makes sense 
but having him here made me happy
@altoan - glad your second session went well. I’m really anxious about mine next Tuesday - probably because I know how ill I will feel after it. I hope your son was reassured? One of my biggest worries is the impact on my children. I can see how concerned they are and it really upsets me. I’m trying to keep everything as normal as possible but it’s hard because they’ve never seen me ill before x
Hard to know @ivy-cat ….he’s a man! But I hope so. How old are your children? My daughter is 26 and son almost 30, so grown up, working, independent adults who, like you, haven’t ever seen me unwell. But they are wonderful and doing their bit to offer support just in different ways to each other. I guess we must have done something right in bringing them up?
My parents are both still alive (in their 90s, we are very lucky!) and I feel equally guilty about the affect this is having on them 
Mine are 23, 20 and 16. I feel particularly worried about my youngest as he’s about to do his GCSEs as I go through chemo and I will probably be at my most ill whilst he’s in the middle of them. Ally my children are pretty close though and look out for each other, which is good. I also have aged parents - they literally don’t know how to deal with this. My Dad basically never mentions it and my Mum just constantly tells me it will all be fine! Honestly, the stress and worry about the impact this has on family and friends is one of the hardest things about this whole thing @altoan
I completely agree. It’s good that they have each other - they confide in their friends/partners I’m sure so can offload and be distracted by them too. I assume that the school know your situation? They will support him through his GCSEs I know.
My Dad sounds the same, whereas if I don’t speak to Mum within a nano-second of the appointment time she decides some tragedy has occurred and she may never see me again 
Ditto, I can really relate to these posts. It’s hard to keep everything normal especially when kids are doing exams and with a stressful house it’s not easy. Dreading to think what I will be like once I start chemo and then am plunged into menopause at the same time. And sometimes family can make things worse with constant checking in and often I don’t really want to go through every detail with them… too much positivity can drive you mad. Exhausting and I haven’t even started yet!
@SL255 The best support I’ve found are those people who just say that they’re thinking about/praying for me but then go on to tell me something that they have done/ we’re watching on TV etc…nice to know that I have their support but not going into every detail repeatedly!
I also wanted to go back to your question about the cold cap to say that yesterday I took paracetamol before I left home (which was about an hour before the cap went on) and it definitely made a difference. The cold cap itself wasn’t as bad as the first time either, so I hope that’s given you some encouragement to stick with it if you can. Do you start next week?