Cancer 78

I’ve felt a little odd over the last couple of days. I get this regularly, and it usually occurs in the middle of the chemotherapy cycle. I can’t describe it exactly. It is not like being normally ill with a cold, aching joints, a snuffly nose, or a cough. It feels slightly alien, certainly unknown.

There are elements that are easy to describe, such as diarrhoea, but when you have a stoma even that isn’t normal. Instead of the normal symptoms of diarrhoea my bag fills up, usually quickly, and with a rather liquidy substance – bear in mind that I have a chunk of my colon missing so even normal faeces don’t get a chance to harden up properly. It is potentially hazardous, especially if I am asleep and it fills. As yet I have not had an explosion in bed with all its easily imagined consequences, but it could easily happen. Perhaps that is partly why I am out of bed so long on these nights.

It is the other elements or symptoms that are difficult to describe. I am tired, but it is not like normal tiredness. Sleeping doesn’t resolve it. There is a feeling inside, perhaps best described as being out of sorts. I feel sick, yet I don’t feel sick – my appetite is fine, and I do not throw up. My head feels queasy (is that even possible?). I feel dizzy yet not dizzy. Sometimes I have to stop and reorient myself, yet I am not disoriented, though I am.

I feel at the same time quite ill and quite well. The illness tends to be in a sense on the surface, because underneath I feel quite well, yet at the same time underneath I feel quite ill but on the surface I am fine.

I am not very good at describing these symptoms. I suppose it is because I don’t have the words to describe how I feel. Normally we are able to describe thoughts and feelings, and put them in words, because they are normal, and we have spent years learning to describe them accurately. I have only had a few months to learn this new terminology and I am not very good at it.

I understand why I have the symptoms. I have chemotherapy drugs that make me ill and other drugs to counteract being ill. It gets very complex, and it is no wonder that my body protests.

I am reaching the point where I am utterly sick of going to the hospital for my next treatment. I have now had eight cycles, and there are likely to be four more before I take a break. These indescribable symptoms raise their cancer-ridden heads whenever I think about going to the hospital, and it gets worse each time. Much of this is in my head. Yes, the symptoms do seem to be building up little by little, but I know it is at least in part just my way of thinking. When I am in hospital I do function, though it is the one point of the cycle when my appetite is affected.

We have booked a holiday. While on chemo I cannot leave the country, but when I take a break I can. We are going to France, to stay in a house in the foothills of the Pyrenees. I don’t think for a moment that I won’t be able to drive down through France. I am looking forward to it. I am hoping and assuming that when I take this break from chemotherapy these symptoms will, at least temporarily, disappear.