Radiotherapy: Week Three

13 down, 20 to go…

Another week of radiotherapy went by and I still haven’t really started feeling the effects. At some point soon, one of my boobs should go all red and sunburnt-looking while the other one remains its usual pinky self, but at the moment they’re both looking identical (except for the shark-bite scar from my surgery on the left one). I’m not feeling any pain or irritation and I don’t think the fatigue has really set in yet either. I’m still tired from the chemo and I can’t manage a lot of physical activity, but I haven’t got to the point where I need to sleep in the afternoons yet.

It’s almost two months since the final chemo and my hair still isn’t making much progress. As you can see in the photo above, there’s just a bit of fluff growing on the sides (and back) of my head, but it’s still really bald on top. I’m thinking I’ll have to start some sort of new trend for shaving a skunk-like panel into the middle of one’s head and just keeping the hair at the sides – anyone fancy joining me in that?!

Seriously though, there is no sign of any new eyebrows or eyelashes growing and it’s starting to get me down a bit. I don’t think I ever realised when I first lost my hair that it would be almost a year before I had enough hair again to grow a pixie, but that’s exactly what it’s going to be. So it’s a good job I invested in some quality wigs, as they are finally getting worn on a regular basis with me going to work every day. My target is to go to work wigless in a month’s time, though.

I’ve been conducting a silent and unofficial poll of my wigs at work this week and it seems the people’s firm favourite is ‘Joana‘ (pictured right) – funnily enough, the wig I’ve worn the least in all my five months of baldheadedness. So I got glammed up with Joana for my first proper big night out since the pre-cancer days last night and I actually almost felt I got a little bit of my confidence back.

Towards the final strait of cancer treatment, people tend to say “Oh, you’re almost finished now!” “You’re on the final strait!” “You’re back to normal now” etc etc. But it’s actually a great big myth. This stage of treatment (I won’t call it the ‘final’ stage, because my treatment will essentially go on for the rest of my life) has probably been the hardest for me. Even though I found chemotherapy infinitely more physically demanding and challenging than radiotherapy, I am finding this stage difficult for other reasons. My whole cancer treatment has been going on for so long now, it’s hard not to feel tired of it, and it’s particularly tough to see light at the end of the tunnel. The effect on my appearance is also at its greatest, but I’m no longer able to just wallow all day in the comfort of my own home and just be a cancer patient. Instead, I’m effectively living a normal life but I don’t look or feel normal, so it’s tough. Still, I know time will fly.

One of the silver linings of my week was being able to walk along the beach in Dublin to get to the hospital. It’s about a 50-minute walk from my work to St. Vincent’s and the views are beautiful, especially when the sun is setting, around 4:30pm. (Long winter…) I’m glad I took pictures early in the week when I did, because I’ve had to take taxis ever since Tuesday, when it started poured with torrential, sideways rain, hail and sleet and blew gailforce winds that nearly knocked me into the canal. Not exactly strolling weather.

Finally, I took the nutritionist‘s advice and bought an expensive juicer from UKjuicers.com. As you can see, it’s an intriguing contraption but I’ve used up all the vegetables and fruit in my flat and made the most amazing juices (apple, carrot and ginger being my current fave) in the past few days, so I think I’ll get plenty of use out of it. I’ve done pretty well increasing my fruit-and-veg intake in 2013 but my dairy-free diet is failing miserably at the moment. I haven’t given up hope, but somehow rice milk in my tea just isn’t cutting it. Still, one step at a time and I’ll get there in the end..