Another cancerous update..
Well, it's been a while, but that's because nothing really big or earth-shattering has happened to my genitalia since my last post.
The chemo passed off without any major issues. The day that I had the treatment, and most of the day after were fine, and then the side-effects decided to pounce. Friday night I just felt a bit rough, it was like being faintly travel-sick, like when you're on a long journey and you don't really feel ill, but you don't feel great. Saturday morning I woke up feeling fine, and within ten minutes of getting out of bed I felt rougher than a badger's arse. It was mostly just like a really really bad hangover - queasy, slightly uncomfortable with indigestion, an on-and-off headache, and I just felt drained and listless. That kind of came and went in waves throughout the day, and I'm guessing that the steroids I was taking were keeping a lid on the worst of it.
Saturday night I'd arranged to go out for dinner - it was for my cat-sitter's birthday, and long before I was even diagnosed, we'd booked a table in a REALLY nice restaurant near my house for a small group of us to go for dinner. It's very popular because of how fantastic it is, and it's advisable to book well in advance, so this had been a long time in the planning. Because she's been such an absolute gem while I've been ill I didn't want to back out of the meal, so I asked the oncologist and he explained that it'd take a few days for my immune system to crash, so going out for dinner then wasn't a problem, as long as I was feeling up to it. I left my decision to go right up to the last minute, but when the time came I was feeling mainly ok, so we all went out and I had a truly delicious meal. Boy, did I pay for that one later! ;-) At least I wasn't actually sick, but I did spend a few hours camped out in the bathroom over night thinking I was about to be.
Sunday was worse, but I think that was about the peak of it, and by Monday afternoon I was starting to feel slightly more normal again. One side-effect, which I'm thinking was more likely to be the steroids than the chemo, was hiccups - I had the worst hiccups ever! They'd start with no warning, and my tried and trusted method for regaining control of my diaphragm which has always worked was only effective about half of the time.
Monday was a bank holiday anyway, and on the Tuesday morning I was feeling a lot less crappy. The last dose of steroids was on the Sunday night, and by Monday night the prune juice had finally started working and things were, erm, moving again, albeit slowly. I was very tired though - I was logged into the work laptop and working from home and that was fine but if I got up and went to the bathroom, that'd tire me out, and I'd need to have a sleep for half an hour or so. The leaflet which explained the likely side effects said that I might experience some loss of appetite. I'm going to have to have a word with them about that one. For the first ten days or so after the hangoveresque symptoms faded, I was eating everything in sight, and was constantly hungry.
I'm not kidding - I had an absurd amount of toast one morning for breakfast, and about ten minutes later, someone on the tv mentioned a George Foreman Grill, and for the next hour or so, all I could think about was a nicely grilled chicken breast with cheese, bacon and barbecue sauce on. An advert for P&O Cruises left me fantasising about how lovely the buffet breakfasts were on the last cruise I went on, and how much I'm looking forward to them when I go again in August! One afternoon I went into the kitchen to make myself a little snack, and before I knew what I'd done, I'd eaten an entire packet of sliced salami (usually a few days' worth for toasted sandwiches), half a block of mature cheddar, and a third of a jar of gherkin relish. And throughout that I was gradually losing weight.
Oh, and as for the bruising/bleeding thing... I managed to avoid cutting myself on anything, but the bruise from the chemo drip took nearly the entire three weeks to fade, and on one of the days I went out to get in some washing that I hung outside to dry in the sun, and just brushed my wrist against one of the wires of the washing line - not especially hard, just brushed past it - and that turned into a big black bruise which proceeded to go through a variety of pretty colours over the following weeks.
Anyway, the tiredness started to fade, and I went back to work last week. That wore me RIGHT out - suddenly having to get back into a routine of getting up at 6.30 every morning and not being able to have a nap in the afternoon. ;-)
Oh, when I had the consultation before the chemo, I suggested that I might have a low testosterone level. I knew that I'd been experiencing a lot of the symptoms of it for a fairly long time, irritability for no good reason, excessive tiredness, middle-torso weight gain, loss of muscle tone, cufflinks and ties which match and bring out the subtle colours in the pin-stripes of my suit, that kind of thing. They said that it was probably nothing to worry about - the cancer would've stopped one of my testicles from performing any of it's functions quite a while before there was any kind of tumour, and as the tumour grew, it would've reduced the healthy one's performance too. Once they remove the infested one, it takes a little while but the remaining one should take over. That also ties in with what the people said at the Centre for Reproductive Medicine said when I visited them to freeze a few samples just in case the chemo kills it off completely and in the unlikely event of me ever meeting someone who thinks I'd make a good parent. They said that if I still felt that I might have a testosterone issue after a few months, I should mention it to my GP, and arrange to have my hormone levels checked.
The Germ Cell specialist nurse at the Oncology emailed me the other day, to tell me that my last set of blood samples showed testosterone levels which were "a bit on the low side", and that on my next visit (this Friday), I should mention it to the nurses in the Blood room, and ask them to set me up with a Male Hormone Profile to monitor it and see if I need any kind of medication to sort it out. I'm going to say that I only want to get rid of the tiredness, irritability, fat gain, muscle loss and random depression, if they can guarantee that I'll keep the metrosexual effects like clothes which are actually colour co-ordinated and an ability to cook. I guess I could also add crying at the end of Edward Scissorhands to the list of things I could live without. ;)
The chemo passed off without any major issues. The day that I had the treatment, and most of the day after were fine, and then the side-effects decided to pounce. Friday night I just felt a bit rough, it was like being faintly travel-sick, like when you're on a long journey and you don't really feel ill, but you don't feel great. Saturday morning I woke up feeling fine, and within ten minutes of getting out of bed I felt rougher than a badger's arse. It was mostly just like a really really bad hangover - queasy, slightly uncomfortable with indigestion, an on-and-off headache, and I just felt drained and listless. That kind of came and went in waves throughout the day, and I'm guessing that the steroids I was taking were keeping a lid on the worst of it.
Saturday night I'd arranged to go out for dinner - it was for my cat-sitter's birthday, and long before I was even diagnosed, we'd booked a table in a REALLY nice restaurant near my house for a small group of us to go for dinner. It's very popular because of how fantastic it is, and it's advisable to book well in advance, so this had been a long time in the planning. Because she's been such an absolute gem while I've been ill I didn't want to back out of the meal, so I asked the oncologist and he explained that it'd take a few days for my immune system to crash, so going out for dinner then wasn't a problem, as long as I was feeling up to it. I left my decision to go right up to the last minute, but when the time came I was feeling mainly ok, so we all went out and I had a truly delicious meal. Boy, did I pay for that one later! ;-) At least I wasn't actually sick, but I did spend a few hours camped out in the bathroom over night thinking I was about to be.
Sunday was worse, but I think that was about the peak of it, and by Monday afternoon I was starting to feel slightly more normal again. One side-effect, which I'm thinking was more likely to be the steroids than the chemo, was hiccups - I had the worst hiccups ever! They'd start with no warning, and my tried and trusted method for regaining control of my diaphragm which has always worked was only effective about half of the time.
Monday was a bank holiday anyway, and on the Tuesday morning I was feeling a lot less crappy. The last dose of steroids was on the Sunday night, and by Monday night the prune juice had finally started working and things were, erm, moving again, albeit slowly. I was very tired though - I was logged into the work laptop and working from home and that was fine but if I got up and went to the bathroom, that'd tire me out, and I'd need to have a sleep for half an hour or so. The leaflet which explained the likely side effects said that I might experience some loss of appetite. I'm going to have to have a word with them about that one. For the first ten days or so after the hangoveresque symptoms faded, I was eating everything in sight, and was constantly hungry.
I'm not kidding - I had an absurd amount of toast one morning for breakfast, and about ten minutes later, someone on the tv mentioned a George Foreman Grill, and for the next hour or so, all I could think about was a nicely grilled chicken breast with cheese, bacon and barbecue sauce on. An advert for P&O Cruises left me fantasising about how lovely the buffet breakfasts were on the last cruise I went on, and how much I'm looking forward to them when I go again in August! One afternoon I went into the kitchen to make myself a little snack, and before I knew what I'd done, I'd eaten an entire packet of sliced salami (usually a few days' worth for toasted sandwiches), half a block of mature cheddar, and a third of a jar of gherkin relish. And throughout that I was gradually losing weight.
Oh, and as for the bruising/bleeding thing... I managed to avoid cutting myself on anything, but the bruise from the chemo drip took nearly the entire three weeks to fade, and on one of the days I went out to get in some washing that I hung outside to dry in the sun, and just brushed my wrist against one of the wires of the washing line - not especially hard, just brushed past it - and that turned into a big black bruise which proceeded to go through a variety of pretty colours over the following weeks.
Anyway, the tiredness started to fade, and I went back to work last week. That wore me RIGHT out - suddenly having to get back into a routine of getting up at 6.30 every morning and not being able to have a nap in the afternoon. ;-)
Oh, when I had the consultation before the chemo, I suggested that I might have a low testosterone level. I knew that I'd been experiencing a lot of the symptoms of it for a fairly long time, irritability for no good reason, excessive tiredness, middle-torso weight gain, loss of muscle tone, cufflinks and ties which match and bring out the subtle colours in the pin-stripes of my suit, that kind of thing. They said that it was probably nothing to worry about - the cancer would've stopped one of my testicles from performing any of it's functions quite a while before there was any kind of tumour, and as the tumour grew, it would've reduced the healthy one's performance too. Once they remove the infested one, it takes a little while but the remaining one should take over. That also ties in with what the people said at the Centre for Reproductive Medicine said when I visited them to freeze a few samples just in case the chemo kills it off completely and in the unlikely event of me ever meeting someone who thinks I'd make a good parent. They said that if I still felt that I might have a testosterone issue after a few months, I should mention it to my GP, and arrange to have my hormone levels checked.
The Germ Cell specialist nurse at the Oncology emailed me the other day, to tell me that my last set of blood samples showed testosterone levels which were "a bit on the low side", and that on my next visit (this Friday), I should mention it to the nurses in the Blood room, and ask them to set me up with a Male Hormone Profile to monitor it and see if I need any kind of medication to sort it out. I'm going to say that I only want to get rid of the tiredness, irritability, fat gain, muscle loss and random depression, if they can guarantee that I'll keep the metrosexual effects like clothes which are actually colour co-ordinated and an ability to cook. I guess I could also add crying at the end of Edward Scissorhands to the list of things I could live without. ;)