Saturday August 1 2020
A few days ago I cut my hair short again. My home style haircut was growing out more tufty than I'd planned so now I have a No 4 all over. In the middle of the week my gums started to bleed but with lots of brushing and some mouthwash that had cleared up by the weekend. On Sunday I noticed a few stray hairs falling out (“ah so it starts gradually then”). I had a lovely week with a visit to sit on the beach in the sunshine, a walk in a nature reserve, a walk along a river, a walk in a park. A socially distant visit from friends outdoors. The only thing was that my breathlessness was not going away.
Friday August 7 2020
Today I was meant to be having a chemo treatment but apparently I am anaemic. This has nothing to do with iron deficiency but purely with the chemo being a bit too strong. I have to wait another week to give my body time to make more red cells. I immediately went on a spinach with everything binge in the hope I could help but alas not. It is a fine line between wanting to shrink and control the cancer spread and destroying too many good cells in the process. This explains why I am so breathless. The red cells carry oxygen around the body. Ah so there you have it. The good news is that my white cells are perfect but my platelets were a bit low.
To re cap :- on May 28th my C125 was 1600. On June 23rd it had gone up to 3005 which was a bit scary. By July 12th after the first chemo session it had gone down to 1500 and after the second chemo session July 17th my C125 was now down to 182. This means that the treatment is really working which is fantastic news.
I had a bit of a funny turn after I had my bloods taken on the Monday. Only 4 vials were taken (a minuscule amount relatively speaking) but I decided to take a little stroll by the river afterwards (hah bad idea). I found myself light headed and spaced out. Then I was trying to say something to my son whilst walking gently along and I could not remember the words I needed to use. It was most bizarre. There was a blank where the words should have been. It felt like I was in this peculiar void for ages but it might only have been 30 seconds or less. I also had the migraine flickering visuals I get sometimes. A small patch of my vision starts flickering like a disco ball or xmas decorations under lights. The patch turns into a line and then gets bigger and bigger until it has gone beyond my eyes and my vision then returns to normal.
Gradually the words returned and I began to feel more normal. And my internal panic calmed down. Oxygen ! I just needed more oxygen in my brain. It wasn't a brain tumor ! ! ! I had my bloods taken again on Thursday in the hope that I might be better but I was not sufficiently improved. So now I have another week of feeling ok ahead of me to look forward to.
These last few days my hair has been falling out a lot. A veritable lawn left on my pillow in the morning. I've had some tingling and strange wooshes of heat around my scalp. So today I am going to cut it down to a number 1 and possibly even shave it. It is a strange sensation knowing that if I just brush my hair lightly my hand comes away with what looks like short grass cuttings but they are dark brown. I had not thought my hair would fall out so quickly. Now I'm considering getting a bright colourful wig of some kind for when the weather gets colder?
So I got my clippers out and asked my son to video me shaving my head over the sink in the bathroom. Remember all those movies where people are on the run from the law and shave their heads? It is quite dramatic though at one point I most unfortunately did look like a Clown, bald on top and tyfty on the sides. It did not take long. My son did the bits I missed. To be brutally honest it did not look good. There were circular bald patches on top. At the back of my head where I lay down on my pillow it was thinning quite a lot. So it had to be shaved. No shaving foam so soap just had to do. Wow it took quite a while. I was just doing it by feel. Then my son checked me over.
Tuesday 11 August 2020
A few days later and we are in a heatwave. It is far too hot to put anything on my head. Inspired by Michaela Coel I'm walking around bald and brazen to have my bloods done. There is good news in that my bloods are back to normal and I can go ahead with treatment. I've had those flickering/visual migraine's about 5 times since Aug 7 but I've been reassured I've nothing to worry about. It is the body's way of complaining about the extreme substances I'm subjecting it to.
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