Second Chemo and other stories

Second chemo today. My sister kindly came with me. I was armed with numbing cream for the port site this time. Instructions were to put it on a dressing then stick the dressing down over the port half an hour or so before attending hospital.

All very well but when I stuck the dressing down - in the toilets at Occombe Farm, if you must know - the cream spread and started seeping out the side of the dressing. I didn't want a numb armpit too! Looks like I got one anyway, but happily there must still have been enough cream left in the correct place as I didn't even feel the "sharp scratch" (yeah, and the rest...) that the nurses always warn you about when sticking the needle in. That phrase "sharp scratch" appears to be a universal hospital euphemism for "I'm sticking a needle in you. Get real, of course it's going to hurt, but we'll pretend it won't by making you think it should only feel like a scratch therefore you are overreacting".

Except when you have numbing cream - tangible version of gas and air, very useful stuff.

Had a lovely nurse doing my chemo today. She had lived in Chudleigh until she moved a couple weeks ago so we all had lots of Chudleigh chat to talk about.

Managed to drive myself home after the chemo, the post-chemo lack of spatial awareness doesn't seem to affect driving although I have bashed in to a couple of doorways navigating around my home - on foot - since.

The other thing that has happened recently is that like a cat with its whiskers cut off, now I have no hair I have started repeatedly banging my head. For the past 3 years I have managed to operate the under stairs cupboard safely without ever hitting my head yet since having my head shaved I have smacked in to the door frame almost every time I've opened it! How embarrassing.

I have been wearing my wigs sometimes but they are a bit faffy so I have more often been wearing other types of headgear instead. The main drawback with wearing those is that when people see me in them I inevitably get what my Cancer Friend has hilariously termed the "Cancer Sadface". I'm sure you know it. Don't do it.

I am less subtle than my Cancer Friend - when a non blood relative who shall remain nameless came over to my house and started giving me that look, I dubbed it the "Dead Man Walking" look. Said relative still comes over and still does it, coupling it with small talk about "how unfair" illnesses are. Don't do that, either.