The point of chemotherapy is to load the body with sufficient poison.......

Two posts today!

Really interesting article in the Sunday Times yesterday, not just for its slant on the government considering cutting benefits for cancer patients, but also for the very blunt summary regarding  how bad chemo can make you feel.  I have been guilty at times of thinking "come on Ella, you can't be feeling that bad"  - this article has helped me to further understand just how truly ill she must feel on many days as a result of being given chemotherapy (therapy??).

Thank you Jenni Russell for such a welll written and sharply observed article

Not skiving minister, just suffering cancer    if you want to read the full article, or I have lifted a couple of paragraphs out below....


.........but I have never felt as appalling as I did on chemo. The point of chemotherapy is to load the body with sufficient poison to kill the cancer without quite killing the patient. It is crude medicine and, because we understand so little about genes or cancer pathways, it is unpredictable.

I had assumed I would overcome it with a bit of willpower. Instead I had vomiting, nausea, headaches, muscle weakness and an inability to tolerate bright lights. For the first four days in every fortnight’s treatment, I couldn’t eat, speak, read, listen to the radio or get out of bed. My white blood cell count sank so low that I needed injections to boost my bone marrow production. For the next six days I was too weak to want to walk upstairs. There was no fight left in my body; every cell was being affected and it seemed every cell was losing the will to live. Then for three days I would feel almost normal until the cycle began again.