2012 Bring it on !

With the New Year celebrations out of the way, my main thoughts are now to get started with my new chemo that has been winking at me from the fridge door for over a week .

This chemo should have started before Xmas, after my latest CT Scan had shown further progression in my liver. I was feeling pretty down, totally fed up of 2011 and all the crap side effects that the Capectabine chemo had given me, and I just wanted a rest from it all. 

I was admitted into Hospital with chest pains on my left side (the 2^nd time in 2 months) the week before Christmas and was being monitored and checked for blood clots in my lung. While sat bored in the hospital bed and arguing with the nurses that for me having a low blood pressure reading was normal, and that I was fine and just need needed to get the hell out of there, my oncologist turned up with my latest CT scan results. Hey Ho, there is no clot or cancer showing in my lung, but as a safety measure I have to inject myself with a blood thinner every day, stab myself in the spare tyre of my stomach with a super sharp needle.  The nurse's had been stabbing me for the duration of my stay, but it was now time for me to learn to do it myself.   Cripes!! I used to pass out with the sight of a needle so a big pat on the back is required here for coming such a long way in the needle phobia department.  Plus with the added bonus of me knowing that these injections actually burned like frickin hell and so far had numerous bruises to show for it.

My oncologist explained to me about the new chemotherapy that I would be having, he said that I would take it home and agreed that I could start after the new year, now these plans were smashed to smithereens when other Mr Oncologist turned up and told me that he didn’t want me to go home until AFTER I’d had the chemo along-side the drug Herceptin, and of course hospital pharmacy’s being hospital pharmacy’s the waiting time rolled into bloody hours rather minutes of me running out of them big double doors.

After a crying tantrum of panicking that I was going to be sick to my stomach over the Christmas and New Year party celebrations, arguing with them that a week surely wouldn’t make that much difference, especially when the stupid cowing ‘Dr X’ had labelled me as being paranoid a whole year before I was diagnosed, and then being told that there seemed to be a problem of getting the Herceptin signed off by the FDA, I got my own way, and was given 4 boxes of bloody thinner injections, a sharps box for all the needles to go in and a nice plastic bag with my chemo inside that had a big sign on the side saying ‘Refrigerate’ and to commence on the 2^nd January.  I was relieved.  Relieved was an understatement, I was bloody ecstatic.

Christmas was fantastic, and totally different to what Lee and I normally do.  Master Luke had decided that he wanted to stay with us Christmas Eve and so the evening was spent watching lots of Christmas Films, with ‘Polar Express’ being my favourite and all 3 of us having a glass of bailey’s while eating all sorts of naughtiness.  Our Christmas day, after a very hectic morning of unwrapping presents... oohhh goodies, camera and tripod to mention just a few, which made me feel that I had been such a good girl this year as they were right up there at the top of my Santa list.   This hectic morning suddenly turned into a quite relaxed day.  Luke went back to his mums at half past 12 at which point Lee and I had already got the dinner going and just flopped onto the sofa.  Normally, we don’t seem to get a minute to catch our breath due to going round all the family visiting, but this year we had planned it different, we had planned to stay put and not take a foot out of the front door.  Later in the afternoon, I did feel as though I had missed out, but that was probably due to the fact that I was thinking that everyone else in the family were partying, boozing and just plain old being utter lunatics, Which I have to add is what I am usually like.  Give me a glass, and I’ll pour wine in it, give me a dance floor and I’ll do the Can Can off the table.  But the main issue here is that we wanted a quiet Christmas, nothing to hectic, to make sure I didn’t have a relapse and finish off back in a hospital bed.

The rest of the week, in between Lee and I taking the dogs out and me taking endless amounts of pictures on my new camera, took our time visiting round Lee’s family.  And then before we knew it, New Years Eve was upon us.

New Years Eve is my night, always has been since finding out that Santa didn’t exist.. Whoops sorry for all you believers ha ha.  Anyway, even though we had planned a quiet Christmas, New Year we planned to bring in with a bang.  We loaded the car up, clothes, dog beds, dog food, and dishes, got the over excited dogs in the car and then drove up to Donny.   We arrived at my mums, and had just enough time to empty the car, get the dogs settled and a have a quick drink before we headed off round to my brothers.  Boy oh Boy, he’d really pulled all the stops out this year.  Massive buffet, (well done Kerry), huge pan of chicken curry (well done little brother) and the best Kareoke ever, all complete with flashy disco lights.  I am the worst person on a Kareoke, talk about breaking glass, you have to lock all your glasses away when I get going and make sure there wrapped in cotton wool too.  We had Neil and Jay (Kerry’s sister) singing Meat loaf ‘Will you love me forever’ or should I say shouting, which had us in fits of laughter as at one point neither of them were singing and then all you heard at the top of Jay’s voice was ‘It’s your turn you twat’.   This was followed by a bit of Roy Orbison’s Pretty Woman and not to forget my grand finale of YMCA with Joe my little adorable 8yr old nephew. The night was ace, well until it got close to midnight when our Kez handed out cheap pink champagne to drink the New Year in, it tasted like she’d took it out of the bog, and can’t imagine how gross it would have been if I hadn’t already been intoxicated by the endless amounts of vodka and wine that I had already consumed.  It had gone 2.30 and I was flagging, sitting quietly on the chair in the corner while laughing at everyone else making complete fools of themselves.  (Mmmm I wonder if they remembered that I set the camcorder going for the night, Definitely have dome blackmail material on there ha ha)  My mum had already gone home a little earlier and so Lee and I made the journey, on foot to her house.

New Years Day and New Thick Head to go with it, Lee drove us back home, with me immediately plopping on the sofa for the rest of the day and evening as soon as we walked through the door.

So now with all the Christmas and New Year celebrations out of the way, and a good one at that, I can now put all my energy and focus on killing these bloody cancer squatters.  I have it in my mind that this one will not be a bugger like the last one and am very hopefully that it will work for me to the point that maybe one day, I will prove the doctors wrong of them saying, my cancer is incurable.  I have no regrets of delaying my chemo until after the Christmas holidays; I just didn't want to take the chance of this chemo really messing up my festive spirit. I know a lot of people will think I am crazy and should put my life first rather than a week of booze and celebrating, but after having such a crap time with the Capectinabine chemo last year, I wanted a bit of a break and let my hair down for once.  Plus the way I see it, and I think the crap capcitabine taught me this, is that quality of life really is a big factor in the secondary cancer malarkey.  What is the point of living for 10, 20 or even 30 yrs if you spend all that time throwing up and feeling so bloody bad that you spend 17 days out of every 21 in bed, comatose’d with the drugs that your are taking.  I don’t know about you, but personally I would much prefer to live a fuller life for a shorter period.  My thoughts on this may change in the future, ‘IF’ my cancer progresses more, I don’t know, I may go into a panic status of guilt and cry constantly ‘I should have, I should have I should have’ but then on the other hand i may just smile knowing that I made the right choices in life and actually got to live my life.