Cycling challenges and lowering expectations

I’d been doing so well in terms of cycling to radiotherapy before I came down with this infection (It went downhill from there).

I’d first cycled on Day 4 (In the end, the wig ditched me). By the end of Day 7, I’d ridden to three sessions and had driven or been driven to four. Car 4 – Bike 3. Things were getting interesting. At some point during the third trip on the bike, I got the idea that it would be fun to aim to cycle to more radiotherapy sessions than I would drive to. At that point I had nine sessions left so it really wasn’t a tough target; I had plenty of leeway and I thought it might give me an incentive to cycle if I was feeling a lethargic or just plain tired. Then the infection took hold and while the goal is still achievable, it’s only just.

I’ve now had 11 radiotherapy sessions. The car has increased its lead over the bike and is winning 7-3 (I’m discounting from the car vs bike/me “duel” the session this past Friday when, for good reason, I used public transport). I came out of hospital last Wednesday and while I have been tempted to cycle on the odd day since then – particularly on Thursday, when it was such a beautiful day – I haven’t done so. I know I like a challenge but I’m not stupid and I knew I had to take it easy to give my body a chance to get over the infection.

So we’re at Car 7 – Bike 3. With just five sessions left, the best I can aim for is an 8-7 win. But a win is a win. To get it, I’ll have to cycle to radiotherapy every day this week. No pressure there. I’ve almost finished my course of antibiotics, I’ve had a very restful few days and so I’m up for trying. It’s a shame that on a couple of days the weather forecast is really not good.

Perhaps I should do as a friend suggests and just let it go. She could be right. There will be plenty more opportunities for cycling challenges. However, I’ve lowered my expectations over a good few things these past months, and as this is my final week of hospital-based treatment, there won’t many more of these particular types of challenges. I may be setting myself up for failure, but I’ve got to give it a go. I wouldn’t be being me if I didn’t.

I’m off to get my bike.

It went downhill from there

Not long after the excitement of getting back on the bike last Tuesday (In the end, the wig ditched me), things started to go downhill.

I’d been feeling really tired since starting radiotherapy towards the end of the previous week, on 4th February, but I started to feel physically unwell as well as tired last Thursday. Also, the reconstruction was looking red and more swollen than usual. Skin reactions to radiotherapy are common, but not that early in the programme; I was only five sessions in at that point. Things got progressively worse and they culminated in me being admitted to hospital this Monday evening – exactly half-way through my 16-session course of radiotherapy – for a short course of iv antibiotics to treat a rather nasty bacterial infection that I’ve developed of the skin and underlying tissue in and around the operated area.

I had a dose of antibiotics via iv injection every eight hours between arriving at the hospital late on Monday and leaving earlier today after I’d had the last of six doses (my doses were given at 10pm, 6am and 2pm). The good news is that the infection is responding to the antibiotics. It hadn’t responded to a different antibiotic I’d been started on on Friday. I’m now back home, with a supply of oral antibiotics to take over the coming week.

I’m still tired – guess I’m stuck with that for a while – but otherwise I’m feeling almost fine. The extremely swollen, extremely red and extremely warm right boob is less swollen, less red and less warm than it was on Monday and the rash that covered nearly a quarter of my midriff looks much less angry and is receding. It really was quite impressive on Monday, but there are no photos, as there are things even I won’t photograph! Some areas feel a little sore and tender but it would hurt a whole lot more if I weren’t numb in most of that area following the operation back in December. Every cloud, eh?

For those who like details, I have breast cellulitis, a known but not common complication in women who’ve had certain types of breast cancer surgery. The consultant breast surgeon, who decided I should be admitted to hospital, said the infection needed to be cleared up “pdq”. (The consultant keeps trying to get rid of me but I keep coming back. I’ve now gone to him with one complication or another three times since he supposedly signed me off on 8th January, saying he’d see me in April for a three-month check-up.)

I’m aware this all sounds terribly dramatic. However, for most of the time I was in hospital – apart from the night I was admitted – I actually felt more or less ok, although you’d have found that hard to believe if you’d seen the infection.

This has been an interesting diversion in my breast cancer “journey” (I’m so sick of that term now). It has included:

• two nights in hospital;
• the best part of two days spent at home in bed with a fever and the shivers, either sleeping or just feeling really lousy;
• another ultrasound scan, to see whether any fluid needed draining off – it didn’t;
• a two-day break in radiotherapy while we got on top of the infection;
• seeing two consultants who thought they’d seen the back of me for a while; and
• more people than I care to remember examining my inflamed and burning hot boob.

I have had some lovely visits over the past couple of days… and the friend who came with me to hospital on Monday has finally accepted that I do have something serious wrong with me and that I haven’t just been slacking all these months!

I’ll start back at radiotherapy tomorrow. Coincidentally, it turns out that the machine was down both today and yesterday, which means I wouldn’t have had the sessions anyway. Maybe there was so much heat coming off me during my session on Monday that I caused the machine to shortcircuit! To make up the two missing sessions, I’ll have one this Saturday (they’re running Saturday sessions to work through the backlog) and they’ll add one on at the end. Assuming all goes to plan from now on, my final radiotherapy session will be on Friday 26th February.

Onwards and upwards.

 

In the end, the wig ditched me

I was feeling really exhausted and fed up on Monday evening. When I woke up feeling much the same on Tuesday morning, I decided radical action was needed. The bike, I thought, could be the answer. I would cycle to my fourth radiotherapy session. It would be the first time in around three months that I’d done any cycling.

Just making the decision made me start to feel better. I got the bike out and pumped up the tyres. I stuffed the pump and everything else I needed into a little backpack and, with my cycling headband* and winter cycling gloves on, I set off.

The bike, as always, is part of the solution (Love that bike! & A lesson on living in the now). I loved every second of the 5.7 mile ride to the clinic, even the hill, and I felt great when I arrived. I locked the bike up, looked in the backpack for my wig to throw it on before making my way inside and realised to my horror that it wasn’t there.

I swear my heart skipped a beat. It was the same feeling of utter horror that I’d had when I was out having a meal with some friends to celebrate finishing chemo last November and realised that I’d forgotten to give myself my critical post-chemo injection (Emergency delivery of post-chemo injection – to the pub!). That time, my older son brought the needed item to the pub. That wasn’t an option this time.

I lost my hair to chemo last September. I hadn’t gone out in public without some sort of head covering since. I finished chemo at the end of November and so my hair is growing back, but I hadn’t yet taken the plunge. Now I had no choice. I simply (?) had to take a few deep breaths and go for it.

I remember thinking this must be what a panic attack feels like.

I phoned my husband Andy for some moral support. While frantically pacing the clinic car park, I treated him to a monologue that consisted mainly of me repeating down the phone the same four-letter word over and over and over (think the opening scenes of the film Four Weddings and a Funeral). I then phoned a friend who’s a couple of weeks ahead of me in terms of treatment (although it has to be said she didn’t lose her hair). This is the friend who said she wouldn’t have worried about not having had the injection and would just have waited until she’d got back home. The two of them found my discomfort all highly amusing, which I have to say did calm me down somewhat. As they pointed out, I couldn’t have picked a more receptive audience for my wigless public debut.

Deep breaths taken, I walked in. It wasn’t easy. Of course everyone I met said how good I looked, how well my hair was growing back, etc, etc, etc. I could literally feel the tension fading away. And when I explained it had been an accident and how it had come about, it felt even better.

It turns out I’d put the wig in one backpack and the rest of the stuff in another. If you must know, I swapped because the first one clashed with the cycling jacket I was wearing! (Bet that surprised you, my fashionista nieces Louise and Shereen.)

I haven’t worn the wig since. And it’s such a relief. Perhaps something was going on subconsciously that morning, because just a few days earlier I’d written about how and why I couldn’t wait to ditch it (One’s changing relationship with one’s wig). In the end, the wig ditched me.

Whether the wig stays unworn depends, I guess, on how my hair grows out. But so far, so good, and I’ve got a story I’ll be able to dine out on for a long time!

*No helmet, I’m afraid. In the three months of having been bike-inactive for want of a better term, my helmet appears to have “got lost”. No-one in the house is taking responsibility for said loss, but I didn’t lose it and I’d bet my life Andy didn’t either. That leaves just two possible culprits. They know who they are.