Half way house

Tomorrow constitutes half way through my chemotherapy.

I'm closer to the end than the beginning, hopefully hurtling towards a successful conclusion to this rather harrowing segment of my life. And I'm happy about it. Or, at least, I will be once I've broached and then gotten through the next 36 hours or so.

It's silly (or it's not), but I'm almost as apprehensive before tomorrow today as I was the first time. I guess I'm just frightened by the languid inevitability of how **** I'll feel in 24 hours and the first few days of recovery - all over again.

I'm fearfully anticipating the poke of the needle into my vein, the salty tang of the saline across the back of my throat as my vein gets flushed and then the steady pump of those four drugs into my system, slowly building the acute nausea I've come to know so well.

Obviously I lighten it in my head by characterising it as a necessary evil; alongside the (continuing) hair loss and muscle wastage, it's just a necessary part and parcel of the crucible I need to go through before I can rebuild some semblance of normality. That's the goal I'm fighting toward and, to some degree, it'll be as easy as I can make it - although I'm apprehensive tonight, I have discovered mental resources within myself I did not even realise existed before this happened to me. It'll be more than enough to see me through.

Anyway, I'm all packed for tomorrow. I have sweets to allay the horrendous taste of the drugs. They're a new choice (Japanese sweets called Hi-Chews which I really like, a thoughtful gift from someone lovely); I have to rotate them because anything I eat during chemo gets destroyed for me by association with the nasty taste it's masking, becoming synonymous in my mind. For example, I feel sick even just thinking of eating the mint humbugs  I used for the first two chemos. I also have some ginger beer, hoping desperately that it will act alongside the anti-sickness pills to settle my stomach.

I keep feeling my neck at the crevasses between my right and the previously lumped up left. I can feel the main areas greatly diminished, but there's still a little way to go. I'll ask them for a scan when I go in to see the consultant in the next couple of weeks.

Right - here goes. One more into the breach, dear friends, to progress ourselves to 50% complete.

T