Blog

#17 – Chemocation

10th May 2019 – After a couple of lovely and productive days in Rye we headed back home and got ready for a very social weekend. I was not going to waste time while on chemocation! We caught up with friends for dinner and luckily we got dropped off, as at the end of the night Anthony said he felt a little bit drunk and I said that’s ok, I feel a little bit high 😂

11th May 2019 – This morning I managed to FINALLY go to pilates! It was the first time this year that I’ve done an actual reformer class, which is such a change from last year where I was doing 3 classes per week. Surprisingly, I got through the whole class and only had to modify one of the exercises due to my PICC arm not being allowed to lift more than 5kgs. I was really happy to get through the class even though I knew I would be sore the next day – thanks Steph! Over the last few days I’d noticed that under the PICC dressing my skin was quite red, spotty and starting to itch. My oncologist had mentioned trying an antihistamine if it got bad again, but that didn’t seem to help at all so will keep an eye on it. We had some of our friends over for dinner tonight which was lovely. It’s nice to be able to taste everything properly while I’m not having chemo!

12th May 2019 – Mother’s Day = eating all the food! We decided to make our own high tea at home for mother’s day and it was so much fun! There was way too much food, as usual, but it was all delicious and it was really nice to spend time with our mums ❤ To finish off our social weekend, we caught up with some friends we haven’t seen for a while – which was great – but we were both so tired we didn’t stay out too long. It was lovely to have a ‘normal’ weekend!

14th May 2019 – Anthony and I went furniture shopping today at DFO and because I’d been sitting on every single couch, I didn’t notice when my phone fell out of my pocket. Luckily, in the hour that it took me to realise it was missing, no one had found it and it was still on the couch! After pilates yesterday and then 11,000 steps today – most of which were spent looking for my phone – my legs were well and truly sore! We managed to walk to bingo though and that was worth the walk as all 4 of us ended up winners 🤑

15th May 2019 – We were both up early today to prep for Chemo #8. Prepping for chemo now involves eating multiple breakfasts (see photo below!) and drinking LOTS to avoid dehydration after chemo. I drank a litre of water, a hydralyte and a sustagen all before 9.30am. I also try to eat a lot because over the next few days I most likely won’t feel like eating much more than a piece of toast. Or my new favourite meal… Coco Pops! Every time I go in for Chemo they weigh me and today all my prep paid off as I was back up to the weight I was before my recent hospital stay! Still such an odd feeling being happy about weight gain 😂

We were all ready to go for chemo and the nurses started giving me dexamethasone – steroids – while waiting for my chemo meds to be ready. I mentioned to the nurse that my PICC arm isn’t getting any better and she got the ward doctor to come and check it out. It was really red, pimply and pus was starting to come out from under the dressing 😕 Overall, it looked really yucky. The doctor decided to get me on antibiotics and cortisone cream ASAP. He thought it was contact dermatitis from the dressing and the actual PICC line might be infected so they took out my PICC on the spot. I was worried it would hurt but it literally took about 5 seconds to pull out and I didn’t feel a thing! (Anthony even managed to video it without fainting!) Because they thought there might be an infection, they took some blood and put it in these little bottles that had bacteria in them to see if anything grows. Hopefully nothing grows in them, but if it does, they will be able to test it and potentially change my medication if needed. So, after all of this, Chemo had to be cancelled. It’s quite frustrating because it was already pushed back from last week and now it’s another week of waiting around. The good news is that my cancer markers have still continued to drop even though I haven’t had chemo for a few weeks. Since we now had the day free, Anthony and I turned ‘chemo day’ into ‘date day’ and went to the movies, played games at Timezone and I even managed to squeeze in some shopping! 💕