Tag: radiation

Hospital Lyfe

Hospital Lyfe

by katelharc77 ♥ 1 Comment

A week inside and I’m seriously starting to go a bit batty. If it weren’t for my lovely nurses, I think I’d probably be hatching an escape plan to get out of here using my IV pole as a scooter. Geez I wish we had IV poles like this one:

trike IV

This little blog post is going to be all about giving three cheers to everyone who works in the medical profession! Hip, hip hooray! I’ve talked a lot about my ace doctors in past blog posts, so this one’s going to be about the other ace people who have been caring for me a lot this year…nurses.

Nurses – and I’m going to add the extra demarcation of Oncology Nurses – are extraordinary beings. They are cheery in the face of the Big C every day. They cop all manner of wacky bodily functions being thrown at them (literally), and they buzz around tirelessly making us sickies feel a little more normal. I have not encountered one nurse who hasn’t impressed me in the Oncology wards of the Epworth…and believe me, I reckon I’ve met them all this year.

During my spectacular days of chemo, they’d practically have to drag me like a tantrumming toddler to the treatment chair, sit holding my hand as I sobbed and sniffled and snotted all over the place in absolute misery, then run like Usain Bolt across the linoleum to frisbee me a sick bag at juuust the right moment, and reassure me with the most wise and experienced words, that despite feeling like death, I would make it through this week, and every infusion to come.

They got me through.

Then through rads, the nurses and radiation staff made every attempt to keep me smiling, even when I turned into Lobster Boob and my skin started to shrivel and fall away, they dressed my wounds and said, “Look how far you’ve come.”

And this week I just feel like they’re on my team. And I really have witnessed them care for the old, the young, the grumpy, the mad, and the spectacularly incontinent with patience and a smile. Kudos to you, nurses of 4ES!

When I first arrived, as my last blog post explained, I spent a few days in a shared room. I’ve since been moved to a private room (YAY) in what can only be described as Operation Stealth.

After surgery on Saturday I was actually feeling quite good on Sunday, but the infection spiked again on Monday and I was febrile, vomiting and utterly miserable all day. I couldn’t eat, drink or sleep. There was a concern that the antibiotics I’d been given weren’t the right ones for my kind of staph. In the end, it started to ease again by Tuesday, but my beautiful nurses organised for me to move out of the communal nursing home I was in and down the hall a bit to what feels like The Epworth Penthouse. It was very secretive. None of the oldies was allowed to know, as then everyone would be on their Zimmer frames trying to beat me to it.

While the grumpy one was busy calling her daughter Lorraine to complain about the food, another was belching loudly behind a curtain and the third was adjusting her Poise pad, they whisked me out of there in a flash!

Peace at last! The room I’m in now feels like the one they reserve for VIPs (ha). It’s huge, has a sofa and an ensuite – even a desk and a big fat TV perfect for watching The Bachelor at night. Rose ceremonies have never had this level of intensity before! It was nail-biting! Last night, as I clutched my knees to my Heparin-bruised, queasy stomach, I felt the DRAAMAA like I’ve never felt it before!

Why oh why did it have to be TLBCG Heather?! WAAAHHH!

(Click here if you have NO IDEA what I’m on about. Rosie Waterland does the best Bachie recaps ever)

Anyhoo…

So, whilst hospital is totally not my favourite place to be, if I have to be here all week, I’m bloody rapt to be in the Penthouse with the lovely nurses of 4ES. Even if they do ask me way too many questions about my bowels being open or not, and come in multiple times a night to check my temperature and blood pressure…I think I’ll survive.

Plan is, I escape on Sunday. As it stands now, the IV antibiotics have ceased, I only have one more drain tube left to be pulled out, and I start oral antibiotics this afternoon. I might even get to have a shower tonight, peeps, what a novelty that will be!

Laterz,

Stinky Kate x

P.S. Have you all go your tickets to the Gala? It’s only a month away! I’m really thinking I might try and do a duet of ‘Bedroom Eyes’ with Kate Cebrano. Think she’d be up for it?

One Burnt Boob

One Burnt Boob

by katelharc77 ♥ 17 Comments

“WOOHOO! You’re finished!” my radiologist whooped this morning, bounding in from behind the thick, radiation-proof concrete doors to untape my chest, and lower the bench I lay on.

She is a bubbly young woman, and has really made the last seven weeks of daily radiation sessions more bearable with her friendly conversation. As I sat up, and reached for my hospital gown, she continued chatting happily about how good it must feel to be finished.

“Think of all the free time you’ll have now!” she gleamed.

I nodded, and smiled.

“Yes, it’s great.”

A minute later I found myself sitting in my small change-room cubicle, staring at my burnt, blistered chest, shaking with silent tears. (God I’ve cried A LOT this year!)

Were they happy tears? I didn’t know. Probably in part, although it feels premature to celebrate, when once again I am left nursing the damage of more brutal cancer treatment; the whole right side of my chest and armpit are red raw, and weeping.

A couple of weeks ago my oncologist joked that my skin looked ‘medium rare’, but today the nurses just grimaced as they dressed it with burn gel and cling-film.

filet burnt

I wonder if it’ll at least fade to a nice, albeit lopsided ‘tan’?

* * * * *

It does feel good to be finished radiotherapy. It is, after all, another treatment phase I can tick off my list.

arvind no celebrate

But tomorrow I start ten years of hormone therapy that will put me into permanent menopause at the tender age of 38, and next week I’m back in hospital for more appointments with my oncologists, plus more tri-weekly infusions of Herceptin and Perjeta…so forgive me for not popping celebratory streamers.

ARGH…I KNOW, I KNOW…

facepalm

SELF PITY ALERT!

I’m just so sick of it all. Actually I think I’m just exhausted. Tired of what feels never-ending to me. It’s nearly September…I’ve been in treatment now for nine months. Just think of all the stuff you’ve done in the last nine months!

I can’t help but think about all the things I’ve missed out on this year. My ‘year of big things’ that never came to fruition is barely even perceptible now, let alone my normal old life. It’s been swallowed up by a black hole of hospital visits, treatment schedules and side effects. Precious time lost forever.

small-violin 2

It’s difficult to convey exactly how I feel without making everyone feel like busting out the violins, but it’s kind of like I’m living a half-life. I’m living, but my mind has lost the trusty autopilot it’s had for 37 years, so navigating each day feels awkward and foreign. Things that were once normal, now no longer are. In fact, there is almost nothing about this life that feels ‘normal’ to me anymore.

There has been a huge shift in the way my mind works, the way I think things through, and go about my day. Once Cancer enters your life, ‘normal’ is altered forever. The normal old Kate that would have once gone about her normal old day freely, now overthinks everything.

There’s the added pressure to enjoy everything more, because I have cancer. There’s the pressure of making the most of every situation, because I have cancer. There’s the stress of not sweating the small things, focusing on what’s important, being mindful, present and grateful for every day. And there’s the sick idiot in pessimistic region of my brain saying, “This might be your last chance.”

It’s totally exhausting. I need someone to come along and pull the plug on my overthinking brain! Switch that normal autopilot back on so I can chillax a little, and just be normal old me.