In the midst of my fifth chemotherapy now but let’s talk about my forth chemotherapy first. Honestly, I don’t remember much about the forth because I was too distracted with the attention from the release of the video by AXA and National Cancer Society Malaysia.
As usual, I went to the hospital on Tuesday for my blood test; that normally takes less than an hour so I dropped by during lunch break since my office is just 10 minutes away.
Then I turned up at hospital on Wednesday for a full-day chemotherapy. My sister and mom took leave that day. They dropped me at the hospital and went for mother-daughter outing that included manicure session. Pretty sure they took leave to go out play rather than accompany me for me chemotherapy. Anyway, no visitor allowed at the daycare ward so there’s no point they followed me to the hospital. I wanted to do a chemotherapy educational trip by getting different friends to accompany me to my chemo session, until I realized the no-visitor policy at UMSC daycare. Mission aborted.
So I went home on Wednesday evening and continued the take-home 5-FU infusion drug in a bottle. The drug would magically enter my body through my chemo port for 46 hours at 1.5ml/hour. I’m sure it worked by law of physics but I’m not smart enough to explain further so let’s be mesmerized that it worked without any mechanical — just a tube and keeping the bottle at waist level.
The interview video with Mei Sze was released on Thursday so I was so busy replying messages on Facebook and Whatsapp up till the weekend because out of a sudden, so many people found out about my condition.
Honestly, I didn’t really have a game plan on how to announce this to the world until Mei Sze contacted me for the video. Before then, I decided to leak out some news on my Instagram from time to time. Then I started mentioning my blog here and there so that some people may actually decide to read other content on my blog and discover my #sharestrength posts. All this while, I didn’t know when the video would be posted so I thought, “when it happens, it happens.”
So it happened. Thank you all for your lovely support and care. It gave me more courage, strength and confidence to get through the treatment.
Here’s me right after removing my chemo infusion at the hospital. And also me before hibernating at home the whole day after. I normally feel the most tired on the weekend after chemotherapy.
The forth chemotherapy was almost like the third one. Same side effects: jaw pain, eye pain, finger cramps, exhaustion, constipation, feeling of low blood count and feeling heaty. One new side effect was itchy palms (and sole of feet for a short while). It doesn’t seem like it’s a common side effect based on responses from the doctor and nurses but upon deeper online research, it seems that there are patients on FOLFOX chemotherapy who experience itchy palms.
I caught mild sore throat, flu and cough from my mom when my white blood cell count was supposed to be at the lowest (Day 5 of chemo). I called in the nurses and they told me to watch out for fever so I carried a thermometer with me in my handbag and check on myself every now and then. Thankfully, no fever so no emergency. Just got so worried that I went to bed thinking, “I’m gonna work from home tomorrow just in case I don’t feel well” then waking up realizing I didn’t have my laptop with me to work from home. Haha. Went to work feeling worried but came home relieved that nothing happens and that I braced through the day.
What else happened during my forth chemotherapy? I went hiking for the first time since my surgery end January!
Looking back at all these photos, I suddenly realized I did a lot of things during my forth chemo cycle. Wow.