Yay for showering without a PICC!

So it’s been a while since my last post,  I guess I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t finding things hard going at the moment. I’m getting rather toxic with all the drugs that are getting pumped into me, and as a side effect its causing my feet to have nerve damage, it makes me feel yuck and as embarrassed as I feel saying this, the drugs cause me to get anxious at times (I guess you can’t be bullet proof 100% of the time). Cancer and cancer drugs suck.

Anyway this has been a pretty full on week, I raced my bike for the first time in about 10 months, I set myself a goal of just getting to the start line and getting one lap completed (it was a cyclocross race that involves racing multi laps….. check out the video of last years final http://spokemagazine.com/2015/05/06/huttcross-set-to-kick-off-for-2015/

I can be seen dressed as Evel Knievel (along with my family)… not a bad effort for someone who was doing both radiotherapy and chemo at the time). Anyway back to this race… I completed my goal, and then did 2 laps, and continued on to complete 3 laps in total and finish the whole race 40 something minutes later!

 

I was well chuffed, especially since I still had my PICC line in.  I do have to confess I did pay for it later as I was pretty shattered for a couple of days, but hey, it was more than worth it. Being back on my bike made me feel so normal…. I’ve missed that feeling.

This week was also my scheduled IV chemo week, I turned up at the hospital as usual on Tuesday, and met with my oncologist. Due to me being really toxic and having nerve issues with my feet (this is caused by the IV drug, and can be permanent if not monitored carefully) along with it making me generally feeing yuck, it was decided that my oncologist would stop my IV treatments effective there and then (I only had 2 left so have had a fair load of toxic drugs pumped into me). I’m still taking the oral Chemo and they will reassess this in 3 weeks time. So with no IV drugs to be done, out came my PICC line…. YAY!!!!! I’ve since had several showers and now feel like my arm is actually clean (you can’t get your PICC line wet).

I guess I have mixed feeling about stopping the IV treatment, part of me is relieved as I was worried my nerve pain would get worse, but there is a part of me that feels disappointed that I didn’t complete the whole 7 rounds… as you may have guessed throughout this blog… I don’t like giving in to this bloody cancer stuff, and I don’t like the idea of quitting anything. As I have had it explained to me, it was stopped as my body couldn’t take any more of the toxic stuff… I was getting near maximal capacity to hold anymore in, and the Doctors were not prepared to push this limit. To me  I still feel a bit disappointed that my body wouldn’t take any more… but I guess I still have to realise I have boundaries that need to be listened to so I don’t pop….. I can be a slow learner at times!

So that’s it for me for this entry… some ups and downs, focusing on the ups makes up for the downs I guess. So on that note… roll on the next cyclocross race….. a week and a bit to go…… watch this space.

 

Until next time,  take care, and  enjoy the little things….

RAG x x x x