So what’s chemo like? A question I definitely asked myself with some anxiety a week ago. The whole thing started the day before, with having to take anti-sickness pills. Amongst those pills were some steroids, which, to put it mildly, work like a stimulant for me. For three days I was literally ‘on steroids’ - enough to put me off any kind of stimulants for a while (yes, even you, caffeine).

On the day itself I was shown to a comfy and easily cleanable fake leather armchair in a sunny hospital ward. Joe sat next to me, being a great moral support, checking up on me and tapping away on his laptop (working remotely ftw).

I opted to use the ‘cooling cap’. It is basically a hat made of rubber tubes - very Dr Who - and a machine located next to the chair pumps cold water through the tubes, cooling the surface of your head. Why? Well, in 50% of cases, “you keep enough hair for it to be worth it”. Not a watertight sell for the cap, and it sounds even less appealing when you know it adds about two hours to the total duration of the chemo: you cool your head for 30 minutes before the injections, and then you keep it on for 90 minutes after. I’m still pondering whether it’s worth it.

Anyway, a friendly nurse inserted a perfusion into my arm, and then proceeded to inject three full seringes of red stuff (Epirubicin) into it. I was given some ice lollies to avoid mouth sores, which the red stuff causes at injection time. The nurse kept asking me questions about my life - in hindsight she probably wasn’t that interested in my job, but was distracting me or checking up on my general brain function. I felt a little bit fuzzy, but not that much, considering I my brain was being undercooled. The next thing on the menu was a clear bag of liquid (5 fluorouracil), hung up to drip into the perfusion for a bit, while the cooling cap machine continued to buzz next to me. And that was it! A mere three hours later, feeling much the same, I walked out into the world.

As for the aftermath: putting it bluntly, reading the side effects brought to mind the image of a Chernobyl victim. Bleeding gums, hairloss, loss of appetite, fatigue, nausea … the reality was much less dramatic for me. The same evening I felt a bit nauseous, and that queasiness continued, low-level, for the next couple of days. It didn’t take me that long to decode the feeling as ‘hungry’ or ‘take it easy’. Between that and the steroids startling me awake at odd hours of the night, I was tired, wired and queasy for a few days, but once I could sleep well again, I felt better pretty quickly.

And today, I finally realized that the only abnormal thing left, a tension in my chest, was actually a low-level feeling of dread I’d been carrying since the injections. I was able to breathe more freely, and to laugh at myself a little bit.

As far as I understand the principle of chemo is that it slows the rate of multiplication of cells pretty dramatically. This means various blood cells counts go down (my immune system is hit), my hair and nails won’t grow as they usually do, wounds won’t heal as quickly. I expect it will get harder as time wears on. But for now, I’m doing well.