I was fine until I had to leave my husband at the door and walk in myself. It struck me how lonely I felt without him. He’s been by my side since diagnosis and now he cannot be with me now. Covid.
I’m welling up walking toward the chemo unit. It’s so quiet. I try not to look around me. Not to invade anyone’s private space – but I know I don’t want others to see me struggling and shaking. I’m scared now. This is now real and this is now happening to me.
Nurses with kind faces see my eyes full to bursting and their words match their features – soft. They reassure me I’m going to be OK. They have done this for years, and I am one in a long line of hospital numbers, but they don’t make me feel like that. I’m instantly eased and reassured and the process begins.
They put a hot water type bottle thing on the tops of your hands to encourage the veins to show themselves. My toxins are going in the top of the left hand. As the vein starts to get itself ready – so do I.
Another patient bounces in and sits two metres apart. She has been here before – you can tell. Wow. She’s amazing already to me. She’s heard me chat wigs with the nurses and starts telling me about hers. She has three! She’s lovely. Younger than me with younger children. Diagnosed January – yet she looks so well! I instantly want to be where she is – 6 months in and smiling. She’s had quite a good chemo experience, despite being hospitalized tough with infections, but she’s smiling and you can see the resilience sparking off her. She wants to live and she has told her tits so!
As I write this I visualize myself four or five cycles in, in her chair, talking to another ‘me’ – sharing my experiences and wanting to listen. I am not in her company long – but she was there with me for my first cycle. I’m grateful for her companionship and support.
I can’t tell you how passionate I am becoming about giving others the space they need to share what they need and get some relief. It’s what I have done all my life – listen….. but my goodness this is getting stronger within me. I’m pretty sure this is a coping mechanism too – a way of focusing forward and paying as little attention as possible to what’s actually happening.
They talk you through the process. Three different syringes go through you. Each one has a signature as they introduce themselves to you: cold, dizzy, metallic tasty mouth and want to sneeze. I say a silent ‘hello’ to each sensation – figuring you keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
It’s a strange one this. I’m not unwell. Yet now I am going to be. You want it rushing in – yet you want to snatch the intravenous cannula from your hand and launch it. A total contrast of feelings. And it has been like that right from 26/05. A kaleidoscope of emotion. A multiple colour of reflections. This is the hardest part. Painful. You might know what I mean.
So I do what I do well – think forward! It’s Christmas day, my treatment is over and I’m more than a little drunk. Top up anyone?
It’s in. So now what? I’m dealt a whole load of anti-sickness tablets and steroids – this is normal I am told, and will happen every cycle. I’m then told I need to give myself injections every night for 5 nights, into my stomach. Again normal. These help boost my immune system and are there to persuade my white blood cells to get back to work and lend a hand. Seems they’ve been furloughed for some time…..
I bid my new chemo friend good bye and just go. I just grab my bag, my plastic bag of meds, my coat and just walk out the double doors. Like being at the dentist almost. Well it’s just an appointment after all I think.
I see a client I used to work with on the way out. She works there and she smiles at me. She knows why I’m here as she looks at me fondly. I silently say thank you to her. Yes, I’m her counsellor with cancer but she saw me and she smiled at that part of me.
I look up to see my husband. He’s masked up and his eyes search for mine. He wants to know I am OK. He grabs me and I feel his grip ease a little. He doesn’t know what to do now either.
He’s put something on Facebook about not being able to be with me during my first chemotherapy session. I am not a fan of Facebook – for many reasons – some personal, many professional. I see it’s use and the benefits to others for keeping in touch, but I don’t appreciate the ‘Fakebook’ element of it. I’m fine with this – he needs a platform too.
By the time I get home, people who haven’t spoken to me in months… years even, send their love and best wishes through the screen indirectly to me. I get what they’re doing and why. I’d probably do the same myself (but not through Facebook!). Forgive me if this sounds harsh – but I do think there is a reason we haven’t been in touch all this time. I don’t meant to come across ungrateful. But I am real. I have to be congruent within myself. I’d encourage you to do the same. Staying as close to my true self is very important to me. I see those close to me as assets – they hold a true value to me and they allow me to be me – good, bad, mad or sad.
Accepting how I feel and how I want to react and behave has never come easy to me. A classic people pleaser, I avoid conflict and have often found myself saying what others want to hear and not what I want to say.
A lifetime of this saw me implode in 2017. My therapist rescued me, and finally my story was shared in it’s totality. I was in counselling throughout the summer. My tears dried up after 3 months. Just in time for me to be fit for work in September. There was no way I could have been there for others when I was so fractured and broken.
Funny how your body knows when it’s OK to come undone. Mine started to unravel a day or two after the last summer term in college. The counselling service had experienced a very busy and challenging year – one I was proud to be part of.
Since then I have put myself back together. Some days I know every broken little piece of glass fits the way it should. Others, I wonder why I didn’t follow the instructions.
My husband, my children, my close friends, and my Supervisor (every counsellor has one to help monitor and guide client work and self-care), unwittingly had the glue and instinctively applied a little more when the cracks appeared.
When I am reading ‘You’re strong…’, ‘You can do this…’, in messages, texts and emails, it means so much because I now know they saw the cracks, the missing bits but have seen the repair work carried out.
Work in progress. I encourage my clients to see themselves like this. No matter what comes to slow you down, hurt you, disregard you, spin you around or smash you over the head – KEEP GOING IN THE DIRECTION THAT FEELS RIGHT FOR YOU AT THE TIME.
I’ve been writing for an hour – tuning into my chemo saturated body. I’ve felt a little odd. Warm sensations across my chest and down the hand that is now bandaged.
My husband has gone shopping. This is the first time he has put ALL the shopping away! And then he made food for the family. He’s got a slight sweat on. And it’s because we are now playing another waiting game…….
“Side effects and when they start”……………………
Thank you for reading x