Chemo - The aftermath

It has been a week since I finished my first batch of chemotherapy and boy do I feel like shit. I wasn't too sure what to expect from chemo, of course I was aware of it beforehand, but my knowledge of it was quite light. You are told a list of possible side effects beforehand and how everyone will react differently. The five days of chemo each consisted of being injected with drugs through the vein, they went pretty straight forward, it was after chemo when everything went haywire and it is those days in which I will be talking about in this post.

Chemo has turned me into something more akin to a zombie. I really do feel like a couch potato.  Chemo after all does try to kill you. Funny how medicine works isn't it.  You are drained of all energy, both physical and mental. Sitting upright I get breathless, even reading messages on my phone has become too energy consuming. Mentally, my head has been spinning all week, as you would expect. Whenever I close my eyes, I find it impossible to relax or to stay on one set of thought. My mind is jumping from one scenario to the next. Another problem has been the inability to dream, or to even think forward. Memories keep coming to me, but I am finding it frustratingly impossible to even dream about what I will do next week. So when I do lie in bed, mainly two periods of my life keep coming into my mind, summers spent in Lahinch and University. I think these were the times when I was happiest, carefree and life was ‘easy’. It is the polar opposite of life right now!  Nothing is more appealing right now than the image of a hot stew in front of the fireplace on a cold wet dreary winters day in Lahinch!

The anti nausea tablets work a treat and I haven't got sick once yet. Bread is about the only food I can stomach at the moment. Bread, flora and peanut butter, with pringles, yum. Mum comes back from the groceries each time with a plethora of food I just won’t eat. Anyway she is practising the blood thinning injection on the oranges, she is more squeamish than me but I refuse to put a needle in my stomach. Chemo gives you a horrible metallic taste in your mouth, and nothing will get rid of it. Water is horrible, sprite is better. I am constantly constipated, and often wake up in the middle of the night with what feels like jagged boulders moving through my intestines. The more painkillers you take the more bonged up you get. Everything has a side effect.

I do manage to venture out for an hour each day even though light and noise agitates my headaches. It never ceases to amaze me how different people treat you when you are in a wheelchair. They give you that sympathetic smile, bow down with one knee gracefully as if you were royalty, and when you sneak up behind them they become hysterical and apologetic even though they have nothing to be sorry for. Of course I can still stand up and that, but it is always entertaining when you go into a café and they move all the chairs, tables and prams out of the way only to get the table and then stand up and take a seat. Kudos for my Mum and Dad for pushing me around!

My mum is the best nurse anyone could ever possibly want. She flew over the moment I was admitted to hospital and has been with me every single moment since. When I am thirsty, she whips up a smoothie, when I have a fever she has a cold towel ready, when I need new tights she goes into the nurses storage room and nags a pair! It is a big change for her, running a successful business to now looking after me, and I know she is finding it hard but I don’t think I could go through it all without her by my side. I had originally planned on completing the treatment here in Sydney but I have now decided to head home after my third cycle in mid December. For my Mum and me, we both need to be at home for Christmas. My darling Shaun who has been my rock throughout will join me once treatment is finished.

I guess it would be fair to say I am quite depressed at the moment. Even when you are surrounded by ones you love and when the probability of cure is high, it’s still hard not to feel utterly shit. It has been a massive life changer, three weeks ago my biggest daily decision was which beach would I go and spend a few hours on before hitting the gym, to now where I am having to make decisions about my treatment, my visa and my studies. I do miss normal life and how simple it was, right now everything seems like a massive hurdle and it is hard to see the ‘light’. I get easily frustrated, I don’t like talking to people, even to Shaun, it is all very difficult. I am worried because I have only had one cycle of chemo, and have three more to go. I feel like a ball of dead cabbage which just takes life out of any room it enters. I hate seeing myself in the mirror. As I said before, I can’t dream, I don’t even have emotion. I haven’t cried in since my diagnosis. I haven’t even listened to a Madonna song in over two weeks, that’s how much chemo has destroyed me.

I am hoping my mind will settle as it has been a crazy couple of weeks and will take some time for everything to digest. Some good news, the tumour marker has already started going down after the first week which is in relation to the main tumour in the abdomen. However, I was readmitted to hospital a few days ago due to very severe headaches. These headaches are like nothing I have experienced before, constantly there and no pain killer is managing to ro bring some relief of pain.  The doctors are still not sure what the cause is, but a range of scans planned for the next few days will reveal whether or not the cancer has spread to the brain or if there are blood clots. Hopefully neither!

On that perhaps not so positive note I would just like to thank everyone for their messages of support, they all put a smile on my face! I’ll reply to them all once I am feeling more ‘active’ J

The week I got testicular cancer

Never one to write a blog but recent events during the craziest week of my life have propelled me to do so for two main reasons; as a form of therapy for myself and as a way of informing friends and family of what exactly has gone on during this whirlwind of a week. I do apologise in advance for any grammatical/spelling errors as I will be typing this dosed up on a multitude of drugs.

Well it all began two weeks ago on Monday the 7^th October when I started experiencing pretty painful lower back pain. That persisted throughout the week when on Thursday I could no longer work due to not being able to walk more than a few meters. It was consistent, sharp pain that was progressively getting worse. I went to see a doctor, physio and a chiropractor over the next few days, all agreed that I must have torn tissue in my lower back. By this stage however, my legs were swelling up majorly and no one could tell if this was connected to the lower back or not.

Exactly one week on from when I had first started noticing back pain (Monday 14^TH) I had effectively became confined to the bed, unable to even go to the bathroom. This is when it first hit me that something else was going on and so was off to St. Vincent’s hospital. Again they could not make a connection between the legs and back, but did think my legs might have blood clots. However, I was sent home without any tests done. Feeling frustrated, I went to ER in the Prince of Wales hospital where an ultrasound scan immediately revealed big blood clots in both legs. They instantly gave me blood thinning injections and kept me overnight, which at the time I was quite excited to be staying overnight at a hospital! At this stage, I thought the worst outcome would be Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT).

It quickly became apparent that there was something more serious occurring as the Ultrasound on the Tuesday revealed a relatively large tumour in the abdomen. It was too early to say what this mass consisted of but I was quite taken back by it. Cancer obviously was the first thought to come into my head. The tumour itself was in an awkward position surrounded by the kidneys and liver but more importantly was squashing the main vein which drains the blood from the legs, hence the blood clots and swelling. A phone call to my mum and minutes later she had flights booked that evening from Dublin to Sydney. Knowing my mum would be by my side in a couple of days was very comforting.

Over the next 24hours I was sent for many scans and tests, each of which revealed more and more of what was going on. Having an ultrasound  on the testicles with the wet gel was very strange and not sexy at all. The rest of the scans mainly involved me entering a futuristic machine into a tight hole and then have magnets and beams swirling around, very uncomfortable when you have an itchy nose.

Wednesday morning, I was told that it was highly likely that I had a really rare cancer called Sarcoma and after meeting with surgeons would need a pretty big operation to remove the tumour. A biopsy was not possible due to the risk of puncturing the vein. This is when I broke down and was quite a mess. From back pain to cancer in three days was quite a lot to take in and my head was rolling all over the place.  Also the fact I am in a hospital 17,000k from home with no family does make you feel quite lonely. Luckily my Shaun was there as he always was from the beginning giving me nothing but support and ‘positivity’. I hate that word positivity.

Thursday was another whirlwind of a day. I had met surgeons and doctors from nearly every department from vascular to urology to neurosurgeons, everybody was trying to understand what exactly was going on. I was still getting my head around the revelations from the day before when I was told they wanted to rule out Testicular cancer by doing an ultrasound scan. That of course revealed a growth on my right testicle. So all over again, surgeons and about a dozen doctors came down to explain what was now going to happen. They said it was ‘good news’ and that it was likely to be Testicular cancer and not Sarcoma due to the higher cure rate with the former. I wouldn’t normally take being told you have one type of cancer instead of another as good news, but in this case it did seem like I had the ‘better’ one. Surgery was to be performed the next morning to remove the right testicle. Obviously being a man, having one of your testicles taken out is not ideal in any aspect, but I knew it needed to be done and the American doctor Martin kindly added I can have a bigger one implanted later.

 That evening I managed to get out of hospital and go to the airport with Shaun and pick up my mum. She had said she would always get to Sydney when she had the time, and although it was unfortunate she came in these circumstances, I was so happy to finally have her here. Since she has come though all I have wanted to do is show her how fabulous Sydney beyond the not so glamorous walls of the Prince of Wales.

Friday morning and after fasting for 15 hours with no water or food I was getting incredibly cranky. The guys in theatre were lovely, and I was quickly put in a fantastic mood when they gave me ‘mdma’ like drugs, I felt like I was about to hit a dance festival not about to have one of my treasured balls pulled out. Took a while to come around from surgery but the pain was not too bad. The real pain came when I was in the surgical ward and a guy was put in the bed next to me awaiting his surgery for his bleeding toenail from an injury at the gym. His loud voice was THE most irritating sound I have ever experienced, not to mention his snoring.

The weekend consisted mainly of rest time from surgery. It was the first time since being admitted that I got to actually digest all that had happened in the past week. Of course the why me questions kept running through my head, was it karma for all the little shitty things I have done? Then the ‘what if’ I don’t pull through thoughts kept pounding my head. Support from Mum and Shaun and the many friends who came to cheer me up reassured me that it will take time, but I will get through this.

Now the next stage of treatment was chemo but before we could get started I needed to put away some frozen sperm as there is a high risk of infertility after going through chemo. At first I thought the doctors would insert something and extract sperm out or like that scene from ‘Dude where’s my car’, but it quickly became apparent that I would have to do it the old fashioned way. Easier said than done, I was missing a testicle, still recovering from an operation and ‘sex’ had never been further from my mind. Anyway after a couple of long hard hours, they got the amount they needed. So any lipstick blonde lesbians out there looking for some fine sperm, hit me up.

So here I am about to start chemo (Dad arrives just in time tomorrow). I am worried about getting sick, I am worried about losing my hair, I am worried about permanent erection problems, I am worried that it might not work. I’ll have all these worries throughout the 12 weeks. My life has changed immensely in the past two weeks. That common conception that people lose weight in hospital is total bollox, I have put on 4kg so far! On a more serious note, I can’t go anywhere without being pushed in a wheelchair, I have to urinate in a pot, my Europe trip with Shaun will now have to be put on hold, my hope to study my Masters in February will also have to be put on hold. Visa issues are another headache too. Still not sure as to whether or not I’ll have the entire treatment here in Sydney or go back to Ireland at Christmas to finish the last couple of cycles (I do miss immensely my little brother and sisters). This isn’t something every guy at the tender age of 23 will go through, and is going to be a messy year ahead and will be a long time before everything is back to normal but this is the situation and I’ll just have to power through it. It’s going to be hard, I will get sick, I will feel like shit, I will feel grumpy, I may even be bald, but I know this treatment is absolutely key to getting this bastard out of me and with the support of friends and family I know I’ll be back to my old jolly self in no time.