Happy bones

Today I had my pre-chemo catch up with my oncologist, Dr S___, as my next session is on Monday. She wanted to know how I found things the first time around, so I referred to my symptom diary and asked her some of the questions I'd been saving up. She is really happy with how things are going and I'm ready for round two! I shall enjoy my last weekend of relatively high energy levels before being whacked back down to the ground on Monday. She also had the results of my bone scan, and happily they have come back clear, so the cancer has not spread to my bones. Unfortunately, however, she did not have the results of my CT scan, so I have to wait a little longer for those. St Bart's has had a complete and utter computer system failure! Their computers have been down for 10 days and everything is being handwritten at the moment, causing quite a backlog. It's astonishing how such a large and important hospital can be offline for such a long time. They could learn a thing or two about disaster recovery from our Head of Data and Business Technology at work. She said that patients have been having their chemo cancelled and wards are running very behind with everything. I hope it doesn't affect my session on Monday. Hopefully I will get my CT results next time I see her. In the meantime I'm happy with my cancer-free bones.

After visiting my oncologist, I also had to have more blood taken, which will be tested and sent to the chemo ward in advance of Monday. This will happen for each round of my treatment, as they have to check all the different levels in my blood to make sure they have recovered enough from the last round for me to be able to take some more. As long as I can get up off the ground before the referee counts down from 10-1, I can get back in the ring. Given that my current chemo end-date is mid-September, which feels like an age away, I'm hoping nothing delays any stage of my treatment. At least I'm slowly getting used to needles, and finding good breathing methods to ensure I don't faint again.

Other than that, the side effects have faded somewhat since my first session. My hair, which we had shaved to about 3mm, has continued to fall out, although it's much less distressing when it's just tiny little stubble. Each morning in the shower I rub my head with a facecloth and loads of little hairs come off onto the cloth. I'd say about 85% of it has gone now, and there are just some stubborn ones that are clinging on. Hilariously, the cowlick at the front is still there, a spiky patch of stubble, just as unruly as it was when it hid beneath my fringe. It sticks out of the scarves I'm wearing on my head, prickly to the touch, and I wouldn't be surprised if it clung on to the bitter end. The nausea has completely gone, and my tastebuds and food cravings are almost back to normal, but I'm still quite fatigued, and I'm not sleeping very well. Dr S___ isn't going to give me anything to help me sleep just yet, she's encouraging me to try to drink as much as I can in the mornings and ease off towards the evenings, in the hope that I won't need to get up in the night to pee. We shall see. I'm still incredibly dehydrated all the time, drinking pints and pints of water all day. I've also got lots of little tubes of hand cream (many of them gifts from you lovely people, thank you!) that are strategically placed all over the house, in every bag I own, in my desk drawer at work... I'm never more than 2 paces away from some handcream! I'm also moisturising my almost-bald head. My scalp is going to be treated so well while it's exposed, by the time my hair starts growing back it will be in such wonderful condition.

My mum is coming down to London on Monday, to look after me in my first few days after the next chemo, and give Tanai a bit of a break. This is great timing, as he has disappeared into a bit of a mental vortex: he made a huge scientific discovery a few days ago and is so excited about it, he's frantically trying to write up his findings and get them published. (He did try to explain it to me, but it went completely over my head.) He's extremely distracted at the moment which is fine when I am doing well, but it will be good to have mum around next week to make sure I'm okay!

Not much more to report. I'll check in again after treatment and let you know how I get on.

Dem bones

Today I had a full-body bone scan, in the Nuclear Medicine department at St Bart's. I had to be there at 11am in order for them to inject some radioactive tracer into my arm. Then I had to leave for a while, so that the radioactivity could do its thing, and come back to the hospital for my scan at 2pm.

In the interim, I had lunch with my friend Eva, who has just come back from holidaying in Argentina, and she joined me at my wig consultation. The NHS supply free and subsidised wigs for cancer patients, and there is a lovely woman called Vicky who has a shop in the ground floor of the West Wing of St Bart's, where she fits wigs for people, as well as headscarves, prosthetics, and other services. I had hoped it would be a fun trying-on session but unfortunately Vicky just supplied us with a catalogue, filled with rather un-cool looking chavvy ladies, with names like 'Shonella', and we had to choose from the pictures. There was only one style that I really liked, so I've ordered that in three colours, and I will get to try them on next week. But at least it was a fun excuse to have lunch with Eva! As I mentioned before, I'm still on the fence as to whether or not I'd like to wear a wig. I think I'd rather just rock the headscarf look as I'm not that interested in pretending I have hair, but as the NHS provide this service for free, I figured I'd take a look at what the options are, and it might be nice to have a wig as a back-up for those days when I really don't want to stand out.

I had to drink lots of water over lunch, to flush the radioactivity round my system. I'm really not quite sure how this works, when the radioactivity goes into your veins and the water goes into your mouth, but hey, that's medical science. (Edit: I just googled this and apparently it is to flush out any excess radioactivity that doesn't go into my bones.) Then I had to lay down on this machine:

They moved those two flat plates as close to my body as possible and then s.l.o.w.l.y moved them all the way down my body. Apparently, if the cancer has spread to any part of my bones, the tracer will either gather there or miss it out completely, so they will be able to see from the scan if there are any areas where there is either too much or too little tracer.

As the nuclear technologist operating the machine, R___, reminded me, the machine isn't radioactive, I am! Apparently I am not allowed hug a pregnant person for 48 hours. Stay away, pregnant people!

So now the scan is done I have to wait for the test results, which will go through to my oncologist before I see her next. I also have a CT scan next week, and will get even more blood tests to see how my first round of chemo has affected my blood.

A little update on my general health. It's now Day 9 of my first chemo cycle, and I'm feeling really good. I had two days back at work before my day off today, and although I was still a little spacey on the first day, by yesterday I was almost completely back to my usual self. Much more energetic, coordinated and with my cognitive abilities intact! I'm still very tired in the evenings and have been getting afternoon headaches, but nothing to be worried about. Today I walked the farthest I have walked since chemo. Walking is one of my favourite things, and definitely the key to my good mental health. I love walking, and often choose to walk the hour to work, along London's canals, listening to audiobooks or podcasts, and enjoying every element of it. Since chemo I have had very little energy so walking has been crossed off the list, much to my dismay. I have tried some little local walks but am fatigued after only 15 minutes. Today I had to walk into uni to hand in a deferral form for one of my assessments (I have an essay due on Monday which Chemo Brain will not allow me to do!), which at my usual pace is a 40-minute round trip. I walked at a slower pace than usual, and stopped on two benches each way, but I made it there and back with no dramas. Hurrah! Also, the pauses were pleasant. I walk through a lovely old building to uni called Waterhouse Square, a magnificent old red brick facade with leaded windows and slate roofs, and while I paused on a bench I noticed a plaque I'd never seen before: Charles Dickens, novelist, lived here. The things you notice when you stop for a while.

The buildings in Waterhouse Square

Charles Dickens lived here

My other bench view on my journey to uni: the old trees in Lincoln's Inn Fields