Blood, blood, blood...

Felt rubbish all day yesterday, It turns out it's hard to write a blog when you are feeling rubbish.  I really don't want to write about being tired, sick, fed up etc etc.  Yesterday consisted of hospital for blood test with two children (I have to say both of them where spectacularly well behaved), dropping large bowl of soup in a glass dish on the slate floor and making a horrible mess, Isla weeing on the hall landing, suffering through Isla's ballet lesson where she refused point blank to participate (She thoroughly enjoyed the taster session at the start of term, then after paying for the entire term, she decided she didn't want to do it!).  Then on returning home I had a call from the chemo ward to say that my blood results were back and the white count was too low so I have to take antibiotics just in case.  Lovely, just what I need, side effects from antibiotics!  So all in all, not a great day!  But today is a new day, I had the best sleep I've had for a week (though still not very much) and I feel a lot better than I did yesterday, just need to be careful not to pick up any bugs and hopefully things should improve from now on (well until a week Friday when it's round 2).

So, are you ready for the Science bit?  Chemotherapy drugs attack rapidly dividing cells (as this is basically what cancer is...cells that have mutated and started to divide out of control).  However, we have lots of good rapidly dividing cells in our bodies - primarily our skin, which is constantly renewing itself - that's our outer skin, and the skin lining the inner parts of various areas of our body.  Also hair follicles and nail beds consist of rapidly dividing cells.  As well as skin, our blood cells, produced in bone marrow, are rapidly reproducing all the time.  All of these 'good' cells are also attacked by chemotherapy drugs.  This is why I have a three week cycle...to allow the good cells to recover and regenerate before the next hit.  So at the moment I am at the lowest blood count point (between day 10 and 14 post chemo, this varies depending on the chemo drug), I have to have a blood test on day 10 each cycle to make sure my red and white blood count is not too low.  Unfortunately this time it was.  A low white blood count means you have very little immunity so I could pick up infections really easily.  My blood count should start to increase each day now though.

One of the grim side effects so far (you asked for it Sarah Hogg!)  is that the inside of my mouth peeled.  I guess it's again, due to the rapidly dividing skin cells being attacked.  This spread to what I assume was the whole of my oesophagus which resulted in a burning sensation every time I ate or drank.  I also felt like I was constantly swallowing skin for a few days!  Luckily this seems to be over now, I was worried it was going to be a permanent feature - but my mouth seems to have mostly recovered.  This may happen each cycle, who knows.