You couldn’t make it up

You couldn’t make it up. I walked into the clinic this morning for my first chemo session to see the front page of today’s Daily Mail glaring up at me accusingly from the coffee table in the waiting area. “1 drink a day raises breast cancer risk”. In huge capital letters and “1 drink” underlined for good measure. You gotta laugh. I didn’t bother reading the article as it’s kind of irrelevant now.

The session went fine. I opted for “scalp cooling” in the end in a probably ultimately futile effort to reduce hair loss. Often it doesn’t work. It’s cold, but bearable. The chemo session itself takes a couple of hours, but I need to have the cap on for half an hour beforehand and two-and-a-half hours afterwards.  So that’s a long time to be sitting with what is basically an ice pack on your head. You can be unhooked to go to the loo. The session was otherwise pleasant enough: reading,  emailing, dozing, thinking, having lunch, chatting with the nurses, watching cancer patients at various stages of their chemo treatment coming and going.

One thing you will NOT see on this blog is a photo of me wearing the so-called “cool cap”. While it may be cool – indeed frozen – in temperature, it is the antithesis of cool in a fashion sense. Believe me, it is not a good look – unless perhaps you’re a not-particularly-fussy-about-the-way-you-look sky diver.

I aim to spend the rest of the day resting, go to bed early, hopefully get a good night’s sleep… and then await the inevitable onslaught of fatigue and nausea.

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