Hi ladies
I started treatment on the 22nd August and have one brachy left to do next week. Before my treatment started I found it helpful coming on here and reading the stories of other ladies who had recently been through it so thought I would do a post.
So my treatment plan was 25 sessions of radiotherapy, 5 sessions of chemo and 2 brachy. I had radiotherapy everyday for 5 weeks and chemo once a week, so on a Wednesday I had radiotherapy in a morning, a 4 hour gap and then chemo in the afternoon. The doctors like to leave a gap between the two treatments.
You will have blood taken before each chemo session. I got told in my first week that I needed a blood transfusion and this made me panic like mad. If this happens DON’T WORRY. It’s actually really common and the reason they do it is to give your red cells a boost. This helps the radiotherapy to work. I met two other women with 2B CC at the hospital and they both had to have blood transfusions during their treatment.
Although I read most people cope with their first week quite well, I didn’t!! I was extremely tired and emotional. Then again, I did have my fertility preserved only 5 days before starting treatment which involved keyhole surgery. I don’t think I fully recovered from that before treatment started and my emotions were all over the place.
As soon as I started treatment I found that my taste buds completely changed. I can’t drink coffee anymore and I used to love it. I’m craving things I don’t usually like.
Week 2 was better and I coped with treatment okay that week as the diarrhoea and nausea hadn’t set in too much. I felt fine some days and others I was sleeping a hell of a lot.
On weeks 3,4 and 5 I started experiencing worse side effects. It started to burn when I would go for a wee so I tried to drink water and cranberry juice to help with that. I am getting up during the night about 3 or 4 times for the toilet and finding I can’t hold it. The build up of radiotherapy over the weekdays made the diarrhoea unbearable for me at a weekend. Sometimes I just let it run it course and other times I would need to take immodium to stop it.
It’s strange because you might have a day where the side effects really get you down. You’ll cry and feel like you just want it to be over but then you’ll have a good day and forget about how shit the day before was.
On week 5 I was told I couldn’t have my last session of chemo because my white cells were too low. I was devastated and started to panic again. If this happens don’t worry too much. I was reassured that I had done well to have 4 chemos. The radiotherapy is the most important part of the treatment and a lot of ladies can’t handle all the chemo in the treatment plan because it’s really intense and a lot for our bodies to take. I met a lady at hospital who’s 67. She wasn’t given any chemo because she had kidney problems. She is having just radiotherapy and brachy and she got told this week that her tumor has nearly gone!
Good Luck if you’re about to start treatment. I’m not going to sugar coat it, it was harder than I thought it would be but I did it and so will you. The best advice I can give is to just try and take the treatment day by day. You’re going to have really good days amongst the bad ones.
xxxxx
