Growing Pains

Today I used my hairdryer.

This is a cause for celebration: nine months have passed since the Head Shave and I finally have some hair to dry!  On the other hand, I've also had nine months of pulling a wig or hat over my baldie head and not having to worry about wayward hair. 

A month or so ago I had a black skullcap of new hair which actually looked rather trendy-chic in a severe sort of way.  I've lost count of the number of people who have told me that it looks great and I should keep it that way (which slightly makes me wonder if that's a reflection on the bird's-nest of hair I had Pre-Cancer).  Apparently I have a nice shaped head and can get away with super-short hair -  either that or I have super-nice friends who know how to make me feel better, which is, perhaps, more likely.

Anyway, chic or not, it didn't look like me when I looked in the mirror.  And it was still so short that I felt I was carrying a sign on my forehead: Just Finished Chemo!  So I might keep it short but it needs to do a fair bit of growing before I'll feel like Me again.  And there lies the problem.  My chic skullcap is gradually disappearing under new growth and my hair is springing into life with glorious vitality.  In all directions.  With curly bits and crinkly flourishes.  New hairs reach for the sun like shoots on a bean plant.  The unexpectedly beautiful Chic Black is softening into my more usual Mouse Brown -  except that I have lots of new Grey Highlights. And like a bush that explodes back into life in the spring time, I look decidedly shaggy.

So, for the first time, I have enough hair that people who don't know me probably think that I have simply chosen to have it this short.  That's great.  Except that it now looks a mess and I suspect that it's going to get a lot messier before it gets much better.  So there I am, back in the bathroom with my hairdryer, applying de-frizzers and trying to get it to lie flat.  Ah well, I guess this is a problem that I am happy to have and soon I hope I'll have enough to go for a celebratory and exceedingly indulgently expensive haircut. 

After nine months of savings on hair products and haircuts - I deserve it.

Tamoxifen: Three Month Update

Oh dear. oh dear.  I just re-read my last post and it's terribly melodramatic.  All that stuff about the enemy camped at the gate and being under siege.  You see, the truth is that there are days when I do feel like that, when the enormity of everything that has happened over the last year builds up inside me and comes tumbling out in black and white on the page.

Then there are lots more days when I feel absolutely fine and don't write a thing.

And that, dear Reader, is the danger of reading what you find on the internet.  If you Google Tamoxifen, you will find dozens of stories from women who are sharing their stories because they are having a tough time and need advice or simply someone to sympathise.   When my oncologist first told me that I should take Tamoxifen for ten years, I wasn't too worried at first, after all, the idea of taking a tablet every day as pretty minor compared with the terrors of chemo and radiotherapy.  But then I started surfing  and it seemed that every woman on Tamoxifen was suffering a terrifying list of symptoms which soon convinced me that I was facing years of hell.

It is now three months since I started Tamoxifen and I have not written a single update.  In fact, I barely written at all in the last couple of months. Is that because I have been struggling with the burden of toxicity in my system?  No.  It's because I have (almost) nothing to report.  Not a thing.  Life has swept back with all her glorious normality and I have not once been inspired to start typing.

Of course, I have some physical symptoms.  The inevitable hot flushes are, however, so minor compared to what I experienced on Taxol that they are barely worth reporting.   I have some slight dizzy spells when I eat which I am putting down to Tamoxifen (dizziness is listed as a possible side effect although, to be honest, that list seems to include pretty much everything you can think of).  And....that's about it.

So I guess this post is a rather long winded way of telling you ....that I have nothing to tell you.  Everyone's different and there are certainly women who have a rough time with Tamoxifen but I suspect there are lots more like me, quietly taking Tamoxifen without experiencing anything to prompt them to share their stories.  It might not make for the most exciting post, but actually it's also a story that deserves to be shared.

Cancer One Year On: Under Siege

Today is a special day.  It's exactly one year since I went to the doctor to ask about the strange lump in my breast. 

There is so much to celebrate.  It's difficult to remember now how dark things seemed in those early days, when my liver scan suggested a possible metastatis and we worried that I might not live to see this anniversary.   My mastectomy scar has healed up beautifully, chemo is a distant memory and radiotherapy is all done.

And yet....It's not quite the celebration I had anticipated.  It's as if the battle is over but I am still under siege.  For much of the past year I have been in full fighting mode, focusing on getting through one day at a time and kicking Cancer's butt!  I expected to feel awful, so even on my worse days it was just a question of taking one step at a time.

But I suppose I thought that by now - a whole year since this war was declared - things would have gone back to normal.  And, indeed, things are much improved: Cancer is no longer the focus of our family life and I feel much better than I have for a long time.  And yet I still don't feel 'normal' -  my chest is still post-radio-sore, my arm has gone stiff and needs stretching yet again, I am suffering side effects from Tamoxifen that are very mild compared to chemo but I worry that I'll be stuck with them for the next ten years.  I worry generally.  I have tingling in my fingers and I worry about lymphedema.  I feel dizzy and I worry that there is an undetected tumour in my brain.  I worry that I used to be a person who never worried about her health, never went to the doctor, and now I am turning into a hypochondriac.

So that's what I mean when I say I feel under siege - open warfare is over and life has a semblance of normality but the enemy is still camped at the gate.  I can imagine fighting my way through the miseries of surgery, chemo and radio with a brave smile on my face - only to be ground into the dust by the minor, daily discomforts of Tamoxifen.  I can see why the oncologist warned me that this is often the time that women experience a bout of depression.

So - I will not surrender to the darkness camped at the gate.  I will celebrate my new, funky (if still rather short) hairstyle and the fact that I can finally go out bareheaded.  I will stretch my stiff arm and be glad that it has come so far from the days just after the operation when I was sure I would never have full movement again.   I will rest and be gentle with myself when I'm tired and accept that my body has been through a lot, and exercise and push myself when I can because I need strength in my body to face the future.  I am strong.  One year on and I am alive... and that is a lot.