Here are my final five top tips for chemo. To read the first ten, click here for Part 1 and click here for Part 2. Track your symptoms but prepare for chaos In theory, because chemo is given in cycles, it is possible to track your symptoms and work out how you will be feeling on … More Top Tips for Chemo (Part 3)
Here are five more top tips for chemo. To read the first five, click here for Part 1. Be prepared for both mind-numbing boredom and total over-stimulation A lot of my chemo days felt like going to school. I was dropped off for 9, my dropper-offer delivering me to the receptionist who checked my name … More Top Tips for Chemo (Part 2)
“Chemo is your friend, they said……it nukes the cells, it knocks ‘em dead!” Chemotherapy is the process of using cytotoxic drugs to kill cancer cells, that is cells that are dividing uncontrollably. They don’t just kill the cancer cells though, they also kill normal fast-dividing healthy cells, like hair cells, which leads to all sorts … More Top Tips for Chemo (Part 1)
Originally published on Shine Cancer Support. When something terrible happens, we don’t know what to say. We spend our schooldays learning how to play the recorder, apply Pythagoras’ theorem and recite Shakespeare verbatim. We spend no time at all learning how to be human and deal with the pain that life inevitably brings. I’ve spent … More When there are no words: what to say to the newly diagnosed
I tell all my colleagues that I’ll be back soonAs I slip from the office one spring afternoonTo a wonky blue chair in a brightly lit roomWhere I’m hit by a barrage of words spelling doom The shock takes my breath in the brutal surpriseI taste salt from the tears as they stream from my … More What does cancer feel like?
I don’t have time tofilter these thoughts, so here theyare unedited. We all said it wasbest not to Google. So ofcourse we all Googled. I felt nostalgicscrolling through wifi networksI’d connected to. And then I realised that googling my symptoms wasa form of self-harm. Impossible things have been said this week, things like‘prepare for cancer’. Drips of … More Haiku-ing through the early days…
The year that I turned twenty-nineI shot off from the starting lineNew employment, sparkly ringsWainwrights ticked, amazing thingsMy ducks were lined up in a rowAll set to fall like dominoesI didn’t see it coming. A little tiredness here and thereBut not enough to warrant careTurning 30 is so closeThe birthday that we fear the mostThis … More I didn’t see it coming
Laura writes... 