Chemo-ready

The last month or so has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride (and I’m not keen on rollercoasters) to say the least.  Following my scans at the end of August I was told I wouldn’t be having an operation to remove the tumour as the metastases on my lungs had changed so palliative chemotherapy was the most sensible next step to take.  This was a huge blow as you can imagine, secondary tumours are a lot trickier to deal with apparently, although I’m still not that clear as to why. Still I was determined to fight and get going with chemo as soon as possible. A few days later however, I was blue-lighted to A&E with suspected sepsis.  This changed everything as chemotherapy can’t be given if there is infection and the only way to get rid of the infection (caused by an abscess on the tumour) is to remove the tumour – and suddenly the operation was back on the cards!  When previously all I wanted was to get the damn thing out of me, now I was panicking about my lungs and wanting to get on with chemotherapy and the operation would delay this by 6-8 weeks.

That tumour will be removed one day

The hospital stay ended up being a gruelling two and a half weeks whilst they got the infection under control and got me ready for surgery.  Prior to going under, the surgeon explained the procedure to me.  They planned to remove the tumour and abscess and whilst there give me a colonoscopy and reverse my ileostomy.  Fine, ok, all good, I headed into theatre and the next thing I know is I’m in the recovery suite in absolute agony.  After a few moments of coming round I realised I still had the ileostomy and my heart sank.  I figured something had gone wrong; turns out after all that, all they could do was drain the abscess as removing the tumour would be too risky because it’s still too close to my pelvic bone. So it’s STILL bloody there and chemotherapy has been delayed by 3 weeks faffing time, plus another 3 or 4 weeks whilst I recover from the operation. I seriously feel like nothing can ever just go to plan. I'm totally determined it will be removed one day!

Some positives from my hospital stay: 1. People bring you rainbow cake and more chocolate than you could ever eat, 2. People teach you how to make old school friendship bracelets to while away the time, 3. Nope, I can’t think of a third.

Big hugs & bracelets

Anyway, moving on from that fiasco, last week I had a portacath (I know, I had to google too) inserted which is one step closer to being chemo-ready.  This was simultaneously one of the coolest and one of the most uncomfortable things to ever happen to me.  A portacath is a line to administer drugs directly into a vein, reducing the need for catheters which over time cause weakening of the veins, and my veins seem to refuse to have them in anyway. It’s a small plastic disc that sits completely under the skin in the chest, with a plastic tube that travels up and into to the vein, which joins the vena cava and down into the heart. That’s really cool, right?  Max reckons I’m some kind of robot now… I prefer bionic woman but robot will do I suppose.  Either way, this and the fact I took him to the Lego Ninjago Movie, means in his eyes I’m so much cooler now than I was a few days ago! Getting it there was not so cool.  It was inserted under local anaesthetic using x-ray to guide the radiographer.  I didn’t feel any pain but wow was it uncomfortable and weird.  It’s so so strange to have someone prodding and poking at your chest in such a forceful way it knocks the wind out of you. Then I could actually feel the tube travelling around inside my chest.  I was really panicky and shaky throughout (a nurse had to press down on my leg for the whole hour as it was shaking so much) but I did manage to take a sneaky pic of the X-ray afterwards though! I now have a scar on my chest and a small bump under the skin. Once the wound heals though, there shouldn't be much to see and because the port is completely covered (protected) by the skin, it's safe from being pulled at by little hands.

Bionic woman!

Scars are cool (Photo: Becky Williams,

www.beckywilliamsnewborns.co.uk)