Following the Final Chemo treatment

After the exhaustion of #5 treatment, I was fully prepared to feel rough for at least a week if not longer, so I made sure I had nothing major planned for a couple of weeks afterwards and planned to do a lot of sleeping.

I had finally been given a date for my Portacath to be fitted for the Friday following treatment (22nd October) so knew I would be staying overnight at Mount Vernon hospital on Thursday night as I had to have bloods taken on Thursday afternoon and my theatre time for Friday was booked in for 8am so I thought it would make sense to have an afternoon to myself to relax, but apart from that I didn’t really have anything planned.

Anyway, I felt the usual disdain from the lack of ability to taste anything, which doesn’t sound like a hugely terrible side effect, but actually its the one that has bothered me the most. I’m considered a fussy eater, I don’t like a lot of foods and I won’t drink tap water. This isn’t usually a problem in my day to day life as I always eat enough (if not the healthiest of diets) and live on Perfectly Clear flavoured water. The problem arises when my flavoured water tastes nasty, because then I get dehydrated, this I’ve decided is the route of all my chemo side effects.

The “hangover belly” that I’ve referred to before has be the same symptom as a hangover because that is dehydration too. Normally I would just drink a lot, but when the only drinks that are even slightly veasible to drink are Orange Juice (too acidic in large quantities) and Fanta (my holiday abroad favourite when I can’t drink anything else) is so gassy and impractical to drink all day long. It just isn’t possible.

I’ve found that Lucozade Sport helps A LOT, but can be quite expensive and sickly if you drink too much of it. However it does help me out of the desperate days after treatment.

Basically, I haven’t been able to enjoy food for 5 whole days following this treatment and the most annoying part is that the lack of taste is not accompanied by lack of desire for food. I swear I must have put on at least half a stone this week as the only things i enjoy eating at this time are high calorie, high flavour foods, such as chocolate, cakes, sweets, mature cheddar etc.

As before there is always a day when the taste buds start coming back – usually day 5, this time it fell on day 6 – Cath’s baby shower. I sat and ate practically a whole (large) bag of cheesy balls and crispy sticks, plus 3 home made cupcakes, while everyone else sat there politely picking at a single cupcake and maybe a couple of crisps and bitesized snacks. I also managed to polish off 2 cans of Cherry Coke (delightful), then went home and had a big pasta dinner. (I had also eaten a massive full english Breakfast – cooked by my wonderful husband and a bowl of cereal before arriving at the baby shower). As I’m typing this even I’m thinking 7lbs is far too low an estimate of how much weight I’ve put on.

In terms of tiredness, I have had a sleep when Amber has napped every day this week (Wednesday - Saturday, with a short nap on Sunday between shovelling food into my mouth!).
I’ve been going to bed in the evenings between 7 and 8.30 all week with a late one on Saturday when the parents came round for a take away. We are now on the second Thursday after treatment and I feel absolutely fine again. Yey! That means I won’t feel chemo yuk again, hooray!