Hi to all the Feb 2020 ladies I'm from the Feb 2019 group - and in fact today is the anniversary of my first chemo dose last year I thought this would be an appropriate moment for me to pop on, wish you all well, tell you a little about how the last year has gone for me, and hopefully offer you all some reassurance about the months ahead Reading through your posts so far I can see that you are exactly where we all were last year, worried sick, desperate for information, wondering if we would lose our hair or not 🙂 The last one feels trivial, in a way, but it SO isn't, it was all I thought about! 🙂 A quick summary of my circumstances, in case there are any of you similar, if so, if you have any questions at all, please do fire away. And I'll pop back in here once in a while in case I can help with anything. I was diagnosed a week before Christmas 2018, having found the (pretty big, 3cm) lump myself. I had recently lost nearly 5 stone in weight and the docs reckon it had been there for well over a year (I was 52 but hadn't yet been called for a mammogram), but my previously big fat boobs had hidden it 😕 I had a lumpectomy mid Jan, and then started chemo mid Feb - 3 x FEC then 3 x T, 3 week cycles. I was nervous as hell, but it wasn't TOO bad - never had any nausea or throwing up, which was what I was dreading the most. The main side effects were fatigue, photosensitivity (I sometimes had to wear sunglasses to go out for a walk as the light really bothered me, but that was only with FEC and only for a couple of days per cycle), and the fact that all food except cheddar cheese tasted disgusting 🙂 I pretty much lived on cheese toasties for the whole 4.5 months (and consequently put back 3 and a half stone of the weight I'd only just lost!! - but I'm happy to report that I have since lost it all again) All in all, in my experience it was more of a dragged out permanent feeling-pretty-rubbish-and-knackered thing than anything totally game changing, side effect wise. It does get you down though. I went back to work from the 2nd cycle onwards, as I only got 8 weeks sick leave, and had used all that up with my surgery and first chemo cycle. So that added to the fatigue, but also gave me something to do and stopped me wallowing, so I don't think it was entirely a bad thing. Hopefully you have all got better sick provision at your jobs though! I did work from home in the middle week of each cycle though because that's the week when your immunity is most compromised, and I didn't want to catch any office lurgies. I cold capped - but unfortunately for me it didn't really work, my hair thinned out to almost nothing and looked blinking awful, so at cycle 3 I decided to ditch the cap and shave my head. You know what? I didn't entirely hate it!!! 🙂 I didn't bother with a wig, instead I bought a fake fringe with velcro on it, and stuck inside a little peaked cap, it looked really realistic, and it was much more comfortable/less hot and itchy than a wig. (I coloured it in myself with sharpie pens to match the colours I used to dye my hair, everyone thought it was real! You can obviously get them in more standard colours too 🙂 ) This is what I looked like by the end, no eyelashes, hardly any brows, weird bum fluff starting to grow back on top. Not a pretty sight! But as Deano reassured you a week or so back, you honestly don't look a state like this for long, I promise 🙂 My lashes grew back really quick, brows still aren't as dark and full as they were before, but they are getting there. and hair grows back at a rate of knots! last chemo day! I'm SO fat 🙂 Here's me a few weeks ago - so about 7 and a half months after finishing chemo. 7.5 months after chemo: lashes, check, brows, check, hair, check 🙂 about 4 months after chemo And this much shorter haired pic is from mid October (when I took myself off to New York for a week on my own to celebrate getting through it all 🙂 ) . So it has grown loads in just over 3 months. I'm specifically sharing hair pics as I used to spend HOURS during chemo googling hair regrowth photos to see how quickly mine would grow back, and I'm sure it's on your minds too. Or am I the only horribly vain one?? 😄 I walked every day during chemo - as our Daisy Di (not to be confused with new Daisy D!) said, it really does help. Keep as active as you can. Don't eat as many cheese sandwiches as I did. Keep positive, keep smiling, keep taking your temperature, avoid germy people, and you'll be through this in no time! As for recovery after chemo - it (and the radiotherapy after) did leave me feeling weak as a KITTEN, which was annoying as I had been a bit of a gym bunny before. Well I am now on a crusade to build my strength back up - and since last November (I had to wait until after my last bit of surgery in October 2019), I've been back at the gym on a real mission 🙂 I have lost all the weight I put on during chemo, with interest. And I feel really fit and strong. I do weight training 3 times a week, and also aqua aerobics, swimming and zumba, and lots of walking. I've even signed up for 2 10k runs this year! (although I'll probably walk most of it both times 🙂 ) So when you get to the point that you feel utterly drained, and wonder if you will ever again have the energy to walk up a small hill, or stay up past 6pm, please be reassured, a year from now you could be feeling as good as, if not better than, you felt before all this started. Sorry this was a long read, but I was always really inspired by the stories of people from the Feb 2018 thread (a year ahead of me) when I saw them signing up for the Race For Life and similar, and sharing pics of their hair growing back (again with the hair!) and stuff, so I wanted to give you ladies a similar little boost, if possible. Lots of love and support, Sarah x
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