New tattoos

This week I got three new tattoos! Sadly nothing as exciting as my first tattoo. These are three small black dots, given to me by the radiographer at St Bart's so they can align the laser beams while they're giving me radiotherapy. One is right in the middle of my chest and the others are on either side of my body, about where your elbow is when your arms are by your side. Radiotherapy has to be incredibly precise and it takes place every weekday for a month, so they can't afford to give me dots that might rub off over the course of that time. I was measured up on Wednesday morning, had my CT scan, and now they are fully planning what dosage and angles and everything, and I'm scheduled to start on 23 November (this coming Thursday) so if all goes to plan I'll be finished with radiotherapy just in time for Christmas.

The last couple of weeks have been pretty tough. I developed an infection in my armpit wound and while they drained some liquid out and sent it off to the lab to be tested, they prescribed me with a general course of antibiotics to get rid of it. Unfortunately a week later I found out that the infection was resistant to penicillin, so they had to switch me onto a different kind of antibiotics. So I still have an infection and I feel as though I lost a whole week trying to get rid of it. There is a lot of pain around my wound, it's red and inflamed, and I've lost a lot of the range of motion I was gaining by doing my daily physio exercises. I'm still doing them but recovery is much slower now. I'm also feeling generally really unwell. I'm tired, off my food, and a little impatient to be back on the road to recovery. I've been back at work but I've struggled with the long days and I'm not feeling very resilient at the moment. Plus the antibiotics are giving me diarrhoea which isn't great! I have struggled a bit with my commute, and the other day I had to say aloud on the tube, 'please could someone give me their seat', as I really couldn't remain standing. These kinds of situations can be pretty challenging for someone who is usually so independent and capable like me.

Commuting

And, to be honest, I'm feeling pretty emotionally vulnerable. It's difficult because I had such positive pathology results and so people are jubilant, but they're saying things like 'So you're almost done!', or 'You did it!', or they think I'm finished with treatment now. But there's still so much treatment to come, and I'm running on the fumes of an empty tank every day in terms of energy, I just don't feel like celebrating. Radiotherapy is apparently also very draining, so I'm genuinely wondering how I'm going to have the strength to get through the next couple of months. And after that, I still have a whole heap of other treatment still to come. I'll still be a regular at St Bart's for the forseeable future, and I'll still be dealing with side effects every day, managing the changes in my body and trying to get on with my life. People talk about a 'new normal' after cancer treatment and now I understand what they mean. I need to spend the next few months working out what my 'new normal' is because Past Carmel is never coming back.

So this weekend Tanai and I did some talking, thinking and planning, to come up with some practical measures to help me get through the next few months, and also some emotional parameters, to make sure that I don't bottle up my emotions but allow myself to feel the way I feel, to acknowledge the emotions, and then allow them to pass, without consuming me. I'm feeling a little more emotionally robust, much more prepared for the next few stages of treatment, and more able to get on with things. I've reduced my hours at work slightly, to 10am-4pm, so that I can avoid travelling at rush hour, and preserve some strength and energy during radiotherapy, while also ensuring that I'm there for my team. This should take me to the end of the year, and then I can start 2018 afresh, and put 2017 behind me. So next stop: radiotherapy.