LONLEY DAYS AND TRIPPING

So number 6 done and I'm half way. Feel shitty again on this one. Shitty is becoming the norm. The recovery days are becoming longer apart...and although I knew it was accumulative, the side effects, it's taken me by surprise at how unwell I feel at times. To be honest it's the sickness and complete exhaustion which is wearing thin with me. We are now on Thursday and treatment was last Wednesday and today's challenge is to actually leave the house.  I have had a headache which I just can't shift this time and suffered with bad dizziness. I want my energy back. Especially when you have houseguests... my mum and stepfather were here from the UK and I do feel guilty for not getting up and doing much with them, although of course, I know nobody expects anything from me, but I still expect me to be able to do simple tasks, like going for a walk!!! It was good to have my Mum here (she left yesterday), the girls needed some extended family time and they always adore Nanna and Grampy time. Of course they get totally spoilt and rightly so, especially at the moment. Roxy proudly announced the other night that she had, since Friday (Mum's arrival) 9 ice creams!!!!! I might add though, that these are small scoops in a paper cup, so I'm not panicking too much...although she did then announce that she hadn't pooped either !!

Saturday was a write off for me. My mum and stepfather took the littles out shopping and lunch and I spent the day on the bed feeling horrific. The tears came again on Saturday. I just couldn't make myself feel better no matter what I tried. The heat is also not helping and it's only going to get hotter over the next few weeks. The chemo side effects are so overwhelming at times, they rage through your body with an anger. They are angrily attacking my body and I can feel each attack. Walking was not easy again because of the bloody neuropathy and the nausea was just vile. All in all Saturday was shit but I did manage to prepare a good evening meal for us and it was nice to have a houseful of family.  Sunday I still feel rotten but I get myself together so we can enjoy a gorgeous family lunch in the sunshine next to the sea. It's nice to be out. A little wobbly on my old lady legs but I manage it. Of course, Monday is another write off because I spent too long out on the Sunday but it was worth it. Since the weekend all I have done really is sleep. Lots of sleeping. Such a lonely existence this illness. Don't get me wrong, I am SURROUNDED by so much love, I have the best family and friends supporting me, I am totally blessed, but I am lonely. It's hard to describe really. You spend so much time on your own because you are not fully up for going out and socialising whilst the rest of the world continues. life continues as it should, the littles get up and go to school, Chris goes to work...everything continues but me.  Then there are the long nights when you can not sleep because of the anti sickness meds. What do you do in those long dark hours alone with your thoughts... well you surf the net, play Candy Crush and hope eventually that you go back to sleep. Nobody can really understand the confinement of cancer/chemotherapy until they have lived and breathed it. I'm not feeling sorry for myself, it's purely another observation and a fact of my life right now.

Another funny little side effect, although painful, is my lack of space awareness. The past few days I seem to be bumping into things. At the weekend I bent down in the kitchen to take something out of the cupboard and head butted the marble work surface, not sure who was more shocked, me or Scruffy as I shouted out WTF and then proceeded to tell myself off for being an idiot...and yesterday I walked fully into my bedroom doorframe and cracked my shoulder. Seriously, what is that all about then, like I need anymore side effects that can cause me harm, what with the wobbly old lady legs that give way at any given minute, cranky stiff old lady hands which drop things because of the neuropathy, chemo Dora brain which cause me to forget things in the oven, actually just forget everything AND now this...I should have a sign above my head saying "approach at your own risk"!! I feel like a 90 year old in a 44 year old's body!!

So, in true Coleman style, with the downs come the ups and funny bits. I thought long and hard about sharing this experience with you all and to be fair, I've been so honest about everything else (I refer to Johnny Fart Pants blog), so why not...

So, I had read somewhere that there is this 'special oil', you know the one thats featured in tabloid front pages, all over the alternative health Facebook pages...the oil that helps cancer patients...yes that oil!!! Well, I managed to find some here and was excited to try it and hoped it would make the side effects more tolerable. Obviously, it did not come with instructions or dosage but I thought to myself, it's natural and supposed to help so I took a healthy "drop" and thought nothing of it. This was at about 4pm. At 1030pm I said to Chris, "you know, I don't feel so good". He thought maybe it was the Indian take away that I had just demolished which was very unlike me as it was the first time in days that I had felt like eating and not throwing it up afterwards. I thought nothing of it as I rammed bread into my mouth telling him how great it was. I don't eat bread!!  I felt really distant and heady. Tried to walk to my bedroom and it felt like such an effort. I was very warm and my head started to feel dizzy. I think I must have put myself into panic mode as my heart started to race and I was convinced that this was my time. OH MY GOD, this is it, I thought to myself, I am actually going to die in my bedroom. I mean you hear stories about people having a bad reaction to chemotherapy and I really thought that was it. It was the night before my biggest little's birthday beach picnic and her birthday was on the Sunday and all I could think was, fuck, I'm going to die on Madi's birthday weekend. The panic just overtook my body. I had an out of body experience and then I passed out on my bedroom floor. It was about 1130pm by now and as it was the weekend the au pair was not home, so poor Chris had to wake the littles so that we could go to the Emergency Room. He helps me to the front door as by now I am hardly able to walk, nothing is making sense in my head and I feel like I am drifting in and out of myself. I pass out again at the front door and a half asleep Roxy standing there in her pyjamas sees it. I can't even begin to imagine what was going through their little minds seeing Mummy like this. We manage to get in the car and to Clinica Juaneda where again, I slump on the floor in the admissions. This is my treatment clinic, so they have my notes on file there and I'm taken straight through. It's horrific, I feel horrific, I do not know why I am there, I feel confused and scared. I'm put in a room on a trolley bed in full view of other patients in the hallway. I start to throw up in the bin. My poor babies seeing their Mummy laying there...they don't cry now they just stare at me with their big wide eyes, trying to take it all in. Chris takes them to the waiting room so that I can have my blood tests and heart monitored. I remember laying there and feeling fear...absolute fear that I wasn't going to leave that room, fear that my girl's lasting memory would be of me on a hospital trolley in my PJ's and dying.  The doctor talks with Chris and Chris informs her of the oil. We wait for an hour for the blood results to come back. I'm convinced by now that I am falling off of the hospital trolley bed and keep asking Chris to help me. I feel like I am drifting in and out of myself, it's a very surreal experience. The results of heart and bloods are all clear...really good in fact. The doctor comes and looks at me with a smile on her face and says in a very calm, reassuring voice "Amanda, you are just stoned, very stoned. You should feel better in a few hours"!!! She then tells me to speak to my doctor about having 'the oil' on a prescription so I know the correct dosage. We have to wait at reception for my notes to be printed off and they ask "so how you feeling now Mrs Coleman" with a smile. Seriously, I'm so embarrassed. I'll be forever known as the 44 year old mother of 2 with colon cancer that got well and truly stoned. Thankfully it was only that, obviously I can't wipe away that night from the little's memory but we will when they are older explain what really happened on that night to silly old Mummy. Really, you couldn't make this stuff up...this journey although painful is also providing us with some lasting memories that also make us smile alongside the tears. All I need to do now is stop Chris from calling me Cheech all the time.


If laughter is medicine and the cure to all....I have absolutely nothing to worry about!!

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/04/15/the-us-finally-admits-cannabis-kills-cancer-cells