Chemo is your friend (maybe...)

This is going to be a blog of two halves. The first half is what I was planning to write a couple of weeks ago. The second is about the last couple of weeks.

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Way back when I was first diagnosed in November 2020, among the many messages of sympathy and advice I recieved was one from a friend who had been through breast cancer herself. 

'Don't forget', she said, 'Chemo is your friend.'

That thought stuck in my head somehow and in the middle of all the shock and emotion and random advice which came my way at that point in time, it seemed like a helpful idea.

But then through all that long first winter of chemo it felt very much like chemo was not my friend. Chemo was painful, debilitating, spiteful and just plain nasty. Despite the fact that I knew it was working, I couldn't wait for it to finish.

But then when it finished, and the pain started creeping up again, I kind of wanted it back again.

And that's how it's been for the last 18 months. When I'm on treatment, I can't wait for it to stop. When I stop, I stress until it starts again. So maybe it's less a friendship than some kind of unhealthy dependency relationship - but perhaps I shouldn't push the metaphor too far...

I wrote my last blog after I'd had the first treatment of three in cycle one. At that point I wasn't sure if I'd make it though to the end of the cycle, but I did. It was a lot tougher than the chemo I did at Christmas. And yes I have got numbness in my feet and yes (finally) my hair has fallen out in big enough chunks that I've had it all cut off. I really do look like a proper cancer patient now.

But - chemo is my friend - it has significantly knocked back the pain compared to when I started.

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Which is where I had got to just over two weeks ago. I'd finished the first cycle and was on the 'rest' week. When we got a call to let us know my mother had died. 

When I started this blog I decided that I would make it a rule not to write about the rest of my family, but I'm sort of going to make an exception now.

My mother was 91, and had been living with dementia for quite a few years. We decided not to tell her about my cancer when I was diagnosed, and I'm glad we didn't. She had gradually become less and less able and by the end was confined to her bed, unable to speak or move much. The Saturday before she died, I sat with her, fed her a little bit of lunch - baked custard with raspberries and cream - and held her hand. I told her how much we all loved her. She died in her sleep in the early hours of Monday morning.

So the last few weeks have been pretty full of sorting practicalities of the funeral etc. And reading lovely messages from people who knew her. And what with that, and work, and planning to go away as a family on a cruise in July, I decided not to do any more chemo right now.

For me as a person, it's definitely the right decision. Whether it is medically the right decision in terms of keeping the cancer at bay, I'm not so sure. I may come to regret it. 

But for now, I'm waving goodbye to my 'friend' chemo. Hopefully I'll see you in August.

This blog is dedicated to the memory of Theo Bradford, my mother, with so much love.