The hair and the tortoise

Another week spent largely at the hospital although thankfully not as an inpatient this time. Having dutifully given yet another blood sample on Sunday ready for chemo, I was somewhat shocked to receive a phone call on Monday calling us back to the hospital to give yet another set of samples as apparently the first lot were underfillled. The farce continued when we rocked up on Tuesday and it turned out that the second round of blood samples were also unusable because they hadn’t been labelled properly. So three rounds of blood samples down and finally I was ready to go. It was a longhaul day but made immeasurably better by the fantastic company provided by my parents as well was Polly, Claire and Roberta who dropped by to visit.On Wednesday Mum and I got a real treat courtesy of a ‘Wig Fitting Workshop’ organised by the Maggie’s centre. There was a professional hairdresser on hand to give tips on the perfect hair style for your face shape and how to customise wigs to your liking. As a cancer patient you’re entitled to a subsidised wig on the NHS so my order is in!

My natural hair would never do this in real life!

There were a couple of ladies on hand to give tips on false eyelash and eyebrow application and some truly beautiful headscarves to try out. Having been initially resistant to the idea of a scarf for fear it screams ‘cancer patient’, I was actually quite pleasantly surprised and ended up buying 3!

Thursday back to the hospital again to get my 2 day chemo pump unplugged (I’m sure my parents were sick of ferrying me to the hospital by now!) but we did at least have a Churchill free day on Friday. Little sister Jess came to visit and we continued the girlie themed week with a highly successful jewellery hunting expedition in the Oxford covered market.

Although I’m still very bloated with fluid and generally very weak (even getting up a couple of stairs is a bit of mission), having had such fantastic company and support has really made a difference. And once again I’ve been touched by the amount of suppport that is made available to cancer patients – free workshops, a loan of a wheelchair courtesey of the red cross…

Losing my hair feels like no big deal in the general scheme of things and hopefully the chemo will kick in soon, the bloating will go down and I’ll be able to graduate from my tortoise walking pace and get shot of the maternity clothes I’ve had to resort to, to cover this massive distended belly. Maybe even get back on the bike at some point in the distant future. In the meantime, must work on those wheelchair wheelies!