1st round of chemotherapy….

I started my first session of chemotherapy on 27 September 2017, Wednesday.

I remembered feeling scared as I am really not sure how my body will react to it. I remembered going in and the first thing the nurses will do is to draw your blood for a blood test. They will test to see if you have enough red and white blood counts, liver functions suitable to proceed with treatments etc.

Not sure about all of you but I have always been afraid of needles since young especially drawing blood. I have very thin veins so each time they draw my blood I end up with more injuries than just a needle hole. Okay I am a scardy cat when it comes to drawing blood, bite me.

After an hour plus, we went back up to the clinic to see the doctor for consultation before the start of the chemotherapy.

Frankly speaking, the time from drawing blood and waiting for results to seeing the doctor, I was a total wreck as I am not sure how the treatment would be like and if its as scary as what people told me so on and so forth.

Finally, after seeing the doctor, the nurse brought me to the room whereby the treatment is being administered.
I was hooked to a drip whereby the chemo drugs will slowly drip and it will be carried through your veins to your entire body. The session lasted for 30 minutes. The whole time, my aunt sat there with me and chit chat with me to ease my fears. After the treatment, I was still able to go for lunch with my aunt but once I reached home, I was very drained and fell asleep.

The next 2 sessions went as per normal like the 1st session except that on the 2nd session, I was required to do another blood test on top of the routine blood test. During the time, the nurses tried and draw my blood (PS: 2 nurses tried to draw my blood for me), they started to draw the blood from my right hand, half way through the drawing, they said they cannot draw anymore blood from it. (I was sweating like nobody business, legit okay.) Then the other nurse insert another needle to my left hand, first tried, no blood, now I am sweating even more! They took out the needle then inserted it on another spot on my left hand  then they managed to draw out the remaining amount of blood required. After which, I felt as though I had been running for a while as my top was soaked in sweat. The next day, my right hand and the spot where no blood was drawn out were bruised and it hurt like mad. (Tell me why I am afraid of needles again…)

Two days after my fourth session of chemotherapy, I started to experience this excruciating pain in both my hands. It was so painful that I want to chop them off! I thought it would go away in one or two days time but it didn’t. I decided to email my doctor on the fourth day (which was a sunday) as the condition was not improving. Dr Wong replied the very evening I emailed him, asking me to go in for a consultation the next day. I still remembered that it was PSLE marking week and my nephew was with me because there was no school. I brought him along for the consultation with Dr Wong and he was so well behaved that the nurses were amazed at his behaviour.
Dr Wong saw me and he told me that such side effect on the nerves should not have come onset so early into the treatment. He said that he would prescribed some medicine for me and if there is no improvements in my nerves, I would have to stop my treatments. When I heard that, I was shocked and of course scared to death. I walked out of Dr Wong’s office like a zombie, I called my sister and told her to pray that everything will be fine because I really really don’t want to have a mastectomy. If I cannot have chemotherapy meaning my tumors cannot be shrink then I will have to go for a mastectomy. For the next few days, I was diligently taking my meds and monitoring my condition to ensure that I can still continue with my treatments. Thank God, as my nerves condition got better.

The next few sessions went by with the side effects of chemotherapy slowly surfacing like insomnia, constipation and nausea. It was not extremely painful but adjustments to my diet and sleeping pattern were made in order for my body to cope with it.

I remembered after the 9th session, I was having such bad case of nausea that I cannot eat or smell cooked food. For the remaining session, I survived on plain bread and water. Hahaha, its like war ration!

This side effect of nausea lasted all the way till the end of my 12th session of chemotherapy. I was only able to eat cooked food two weeks after my 12 session ended. I still remembered it was unagi sushi and tamago sushi.

It was pure happiness when I ate it! Legit!