Unfortunately it's that time again. My most recent escape from chemo has lapsed and the build up to this is tense; very tense. I've been doing my very best to stay focused on the day to day and carrying on despite a deep and creeping fear that this time round I won't be so lucky with the results.
You may have read in The Dark Side of the Moon I have been fighting a real battle with depression that at times overwhelmed me, this I have been working on and have made a start on dealing with. I went to the GP's and was prescribed antidepressants; although I confess the thought of taking another tablet freaks me so much that it took me two weeks to actually start taking them. I do hate I now take four different drugs a day... this can't be good for my liver but then neither is the tumour so lesser of evils is what I work with these days. If you're healthy, please please enjoy it you've no idea how much you miss it when its gone!
As I have started to start the antidepressants which are a type of SSRI I have been unfortunately hit with some of the starting side effects they have in the first month. This attractively includes breaking out into sweat in the middle of the night to the point I find my hair drenched; something I find extremely distressing as it was one of the symptoms of my original diagnosis. Even though I know that its a listed side effect expected to disappear with time that moment of waking just as I used to eighteen months ago sends me into to a spiraling panic that it is not the drugs but in fact the tumours producing high levels of hormone and with the scan in just a few days I am terrified of what they might find. Of course this and other side effects such as actually feeling more tired and low with the effects of Mitotane are making the week a real struggle and the only way I really get by is trying to do job after job until its time to drug myself into a nightmare filled sleep. This of course is better than no sleep or I think I would really lose my mind!
I compelled to shun company and ignore phone calls too. I just can't talk to anyone right now.
Scan day arrives and D and I drive to Addenbrookes; oh how I wish I could cancel some how; rearrange, but it would be putting off the inevitable. The procedure of a CT scan is by now of course familiar routine but this time I am dreading it; feeling almost resentful at the minor brutality of having a canula inserted into a vein my arm and lying on the moving table as they instruct me over the intercom when to breath. Of course I smile; put on the brave face and joke with the assistant about how they have something interesting and rare to look at but inside I just want to run. Even when its over I sit with the canula in arm ( they make you wait a around as a precaution to the injected substance making you feel ill) I consider taking the thing out myself just so I can go. In fact I start to peel back the tape just as I am called back.
Leaving Cambridge I am distracted and irritable; I want to be home but even when I am there I know that the waiting has begun. Tomorrow I could receive a call from my doctor, tomorrow I will find out if I get another six weeks of "normal life" or if I to be re inducted into the world of IV chemotherapy and as the oncologist said "never feel as well again".
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