Dear Valentines – glad to hear your FEC 3 went well Elaine, and hope your session was also good Ciccia and that your veins held up!
I’ve got to say that my session today (also FEC 3) was an unremittingly bad experience – the first one along this journey for me, so I musn’t complain. First of all the receptionist at the chemo ward was sick, so the place was in chaos. I needed to get my next Oncologist appointment and the next chemo session, and that proved to be extremely difficult.
When we went in for treatment it turned out that my blood test on Tuesday had showed neutrophils of 1.0 (last cycle they had recovered to 2.5 when tested). As they were so borderline and so different from the time before the nurse was reluctant to give treatment until checking with the Oncologist, who proved hard to track down. Once he got the all clear and we got started, he gave me the wrong pre-treatment anti-emetics – some of it he was able to correct and some not – with a result that by half-way through the session I was already nauseous! Then we had trouble with my veins, which has never happened before. I was already in pain from the site on my arm where they took blood on Tuesday, and now have vastly inflammed veins lower on that arm from the chemo site. I now have serious pain in all four limbs – two legs with shot knees, one arm with a very painful arthitic shoulder and now a chemo arm!
Next on the list of horrors, he gave me the Epirubicin too quickly – although I had specially asked him to give it as slowly as possible – so I think I am going to have vision problems again this cycle as I did with the first one. And to round it all off, the cold cap gave me a terrible headache this time – perhaps because my hair is so thin now. So all in all, just a rotten day!!! To make it all worse, the Oncologist, who is just lovely, is on annual leave the week of my next appointment, so I will just be seeing the nurse. I’m sure that she is very competent, but I would really like the reassurance of seeing the big cheese before starting the Docetaxel regime! OK, rant over!
Funny how the weight/chocolate issue is so personal, as with so many other things in this process. I lost well over a stone during the first cycle and then gained about half of it back in the second. I have always quite liked chocolate, but now can take it or leave it – usually leave it. I also used to be a real ice cream addict and now find that I actively dislike it – which probably is a good thing!!! I still find the mere thought of wine enough to turn my stomach, but have had a couple of drinks of spirits during my good week, which I found very nice, indeed We are all so individual – thank goodness.
As Elaine said, I have a feeling that I may disappear into the miasma for a few days, don’t worry about me, I will turn up again like the proverbial bad penny!
Hope everyone has a good night. XXXXXX Louise
Doesn’t anyone tell them that we are in this together so no rest till it’s done! 
