Founder & creator of YourPCM ...

Cancer: Five Weeks From Treatment

And I still feel completely awful ...

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POSTED BY STEFFI LEWIS ON 01/12/2014 @ 8:00AM

It is amazing to think that my 30-day sojourn to Northampton ended on 24th October and now we're at the end of November. You'd think I'd be feeling fine and jumping round the room by now but Radiotherapy doesn't work like that and, quite frankly, it's been a pretty terrible few weeks ...

I remember mentioning in my last blog post about Kirsty and Julie taking turns to be nursie and look after me, but after two weeks of that, I needed to get back to work for my clients so decided to go it alone and return my life to some sort of normality.

It's been incredibly hard work though. I'm tired all the time and had to consolidate the amount of work I do during the day to a bare minimum. With publication now at 9am (rather than the usual 7am it's been for the past few years), by the time I've finished editing for my clients, I'm pretty much done for the day and just want to curl up on the sofa and feel sorry for myself.

"It's good that I only need to spend an hour in the evening making changes and signing off blog posts and I'm done for the day!"

So tiredness aside, has there been any positive developments with my recovery? Well yes ... my tastebuds are slowly returning and I would say that out of 10, my taste is now at a 5 which is a massive improvement on where I was when I finished treatment.

The palette in the top of my mouth has stopped hurting now so there's no little razorblades to make me cringe, but I still have a major problem with one of my saliva glands. It hurts constantly, it's not producing enough saliva by a mile and what it does produce is incredibly claggy and I'm constantly swallowing this horrible stuff which is making me violently ill.

And it's quite random. I can eat something and think everything is fine and then around an hour later I'll run screaming to the loo and hurl up my entire stomach contents. It's not pleasant I can assure you. My tummy is producing loads of acid to breakdown the food, so I get a mouthful of stingy liquid which hits my throat and mouth and causes me even more pain!

Often, I throw up in the morning as well. I'll wake up, have a sip of water to lubricate my mouth again and I'm trying very hard not to blow chunks as I run to the loo with a mouthful of high pressure yak in my mouth. It's probably quite funny to watch, but isn't funny to endure.

In the mornings, however, it really is a stomach full of claggy saliva mixed in with the sips of water I've been drinking all night. And because I keep waking up every 1/2 hour or so with a dry mouth to sip some water, I'm not getting any quality sleep!

"So I'm not having the best of times
right now!"

At this moment, I keep saying to myself "I wish I hadn't gone through that treatment" because it's caused so much damage and trauma. After all, I love my food and the fact that I'm eating very little, can only taste some of it and what I do eat mostly keeps coming back, well, I do wonder if it was worth it?

And then I think of my beautiful cats, and my best friends and everyone else who's been rooting for me, sending me their kind words, thoughts and intentions and I do think it's been worth it because I'm still here and things are improving ... albeit very slowly.

So the question has to be this: "would I have radiotherapy again?" and the answer to that is a resounding no! I have to wait until February to get scanned and they'll tell me if the tumour is dead or not. If it is then great, I can get on with my life, but what if it isn't?

Well, then it's time to make some decisions, and they will not involve having any more radiotherapy! I just couldn't cope with it. But for now, until I know either way, I just want to enjoy my food again!

Love, light and logic ...

STEFFI LEWIS