I spent a week in bed staring at my hips protruding from my 51-kilogram frame. My gut didn’t work brilliantly, so there was internal pain. I was constipated on some days and greeted with diarrhoea on others. The skin around my fingernails was split like a dry creek bed and my haemoglobin levels needed to be higher so that I wasn’t at risk of constant anaemia. When it became too much I watched episodes of The West Wing’s season one lying side-on in my bed. I finished the entire season.
I remained in an ill-chemical haze for one week. I didn’t think I could keep going, being that unwell. I wanted to re-read The Cure for Death by Lightning about a Coyote spirit that tries to marry a local farm girl, 15-year-old Beth. Beth overcomes self-harming to turn the hunter into the hunted and the bad spirit flees. Gail Anderson-Dargatz’s mythological quest set in Canada was just what I needed – its tale of warding off evil fitted my daily conversation with cancer, my evil Coyote – but I had no energy to engage with it.
My son’s godmother, Ngaire, returned to spend a week with us for my last chemo session. Ngaire was a retired Canberran college teacher of sociology and psychology. She did night shifts caring for our son, cooked lovely meals and was in all manners a gorgeous presence.
On her last night with us she shouted us takeaway fish and chips. The fish was grilled, and the chips were not that many. However, a funny thing happened on their way down my digestive tract. Within half an hour of eating, my stomach rose and rose until it formed the shape of a semi-deflated football. I was alarmed, but also felt like vomiting and was in a bit of discomfort. It expelled itself in the bathroom – several times. Rise – expel – rise again. My entire meal went down the Brisbane underground sewage system.
I put this down to the fact that chemo’s effects were cumulative and the fast-growing cells in my stomach and other places didn’t like fat getting in the way, or quite simply couldn’t digest fat any longer. As I lay down on the bed after my toilet visit I remembered a cancer pamphlet in the preparation room I walked around in before my first chemotherapy session, advising patients to avoid fried foods because they were too harsh for a chemo patient’s stomach, as well as not being so healthy. I decided on the spot that I was like a dog, but instead of not being able to digest chocolate I couldn’t digest chips. I swore I’d never eat chips again, and haven’t.
People often asked me what the chemicals did to my sense of taste. It’s a little like brushing your teeth with double-strength mint toothpaste, then grabbing cold strawberries fresh out of the fridge and popping them in your mouth; you’re hopeful of something tasting sweet but it doesn’t. More like aluminium foil on teeth fillings.
Three weeks after chemotherapy my hair sprouted through my scalp. I no longer had a flushed face from the steroids. I remained whacked with tiredness but not so badly it rocked my world. I no longer experienced intense nausea or food aversion. The metallic twang faded from my mouth.
The more extreme side effects from my chemo cocktail diminished fairly quickly. The residual effects of Taxotere were muscle fatigue and anaemia. From Carboplatin you can get peripheral neuropathy (numbness and tingling of the extremities), which can affect your ability to walk. This disappeared, but returned when I started cycling for more than an hour. I was so happy that the dreaded chemo times were over and the next phase was in full swing that I barely considered these side effects. With my chemical romance came some other, not-too-serious side effects. My chemo flatulence alone could have cleared the Opera House of its guests and possibly some of its tiles.
I finished chemotherapy in October and once the anxiety and depression lifted I looked forward to the victory lap we’d planned around the South Island of New Zealand the following month.
I had a new oncologist as the first one was on maternity leave, having had a baby boy. My new oncologist spoke quickly and could go off on quick tangents of thought. It was like her rapid-firing brain had so much processing going on that sometimes thoughts fell out of her mouth into conversation. She’d come to Brisbane from Sydney and was searching for a Queenslander to make her stay more permanent. I clicked easily with her. I wasn’t good enough on the piano, she said during an oncology visit. She’d once attended the conservatory of music, but after giving up classical piano she went into medicine.
Patients generally expect chemotherapy will make them infertile – it often does. Three weeks after I finished, though, a period arrived. I told my new oncologist.
I didn’t think we’d need to start Zoladex so quickly, but we do, she said. Your oestrogen levels have risen enough to cause menstruation, so we’ll need to send you into menopause to reduce
