The expectation had been set by my oncologist that the chemo drug I was to receive would not make my hair fall out, which was a minor relief in the overall scheme of things. What he most certainly didn’t tell me was the effect that the radiotherapy would have on various follicles on my head, face and neck.
So let’s deal with the face and neck first, now I was never
what you could call a heavily stubbled man, I have always thought that the
extremely light growth that I exhibited went
someway in helping me maintain my boyish good looks. However my volumes of growth on my cheeks and
neck currently are about on par with a pre-pubescent teenager.
The right side of my face and neck, the side where the
cancer festered, is completely bereft of any hair growth at all. You know the
expression as smooth as a baby’s bottom, well in this instance it really is the
case. If we carried out a blind touch test, you really wouldn’t be able to tell
the difference between my right cheek and Georgina’s backside. The left side is not much better but I do
have one patch of growth just below the side burn. I swear if I tried to grow a
beard I would look like a cross between Worzel Gummidge and a Cabbage Patch
Doll.
But wait there is a strange twist to this thread. So I have
absolutely no facial hair on my right cheek/neck and virtually none on my left,
yet above my top lip, since the treatment ended, has displayed a considerably
heavier growth pattern. I have gone from
being able to not shave for a day and no one would notice to this permanent
five o’clock shadow over my top lip.
When discussing this phenomenon with Emma a few weeks ago,
she helpfully pointed out that indeed it did look strange and that I would look
like a 1980’s porn star if I left my top lip unshaven for a few days. Ignoring
the ridicule for a minute, I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of childhood my
new wife had been exposed to. A quick
bit of mental arithmetic told me that at the end of the 80’s she would have just
turned 12, how the hell did she even know what a 1980’s porn star looked like. Had
she, at a very tender age, somehow stumbled across a stash of her father’s “special
interest” VHS cassettes? Her natural enquiring mind driving her to load the VHS
recorder and press down the heavy play key only to be confronted by Debbie Does
Dallas and other Oscar nominated classics. I shook my head to empty it of these
ridiculous thoughts.
The facial hair does seem to be a bit of a moving feast, as
just this week I have a new patch of growth appearing. Imagine a perfectly formed inverted
equilateral triangle of bristles sitting neatly below my bottom lip and you
will not be far off. With Emma away in
Cornwall this week, she is in for a surprise when she returns, she will think
that D'artagnan has moved in with her – wishful thinking on her account one
thinks.
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| The dashing D'artagnan |
I have suggested to Emma now that it appears I may actually
be able to grow a half decent moustache, that I do so for Movember this
year. I am not sure this is a sensible
suggestion and will see if I am brave enough to withstand the huge amount of
stick I would quite rightly get from various mates. If I do undertake the challenge and start to
resemble a 1980’s porn star then I will need a porn star name to which I am
open to any suggestions you may have. The old adage that you take your first
pet’s name along with your Mother’s maiden name means I would be Ruff Doherty,
which I think has a certain ring to it.
That addresses the front of house, so now let’s move on to
the hair on the back of my head. The radiotherapy beams entered me from one
side and exited my head at the back just passed my ear at the base of my skull.
The lasertron (as I have come to call it) is extremely precise and with the
gimp mask holding me in the exact same
position on each of the 30 treatments, the beams entered and exited me in precisely the
same place everytime. The exit point
was through my skull and I found out half way through the treatment that hair doesn’t
like radio beams and so I have a flawless square bald patch of about 5 x 5cm’s on the
back of head (luckily at the base of my hair line rather than in the middle of
my head). In fact the patch is not completely bald as there
is some light fluffy stuff still covering the skin, however to the casual by
passer it looks like I have had some precision hair art work carried out to
form this perfect razor edged square of baldness.
On my last trip to the barbers and without any reference to
me the barber tried to even up the look across the back of my neck and so now I
cannot decide if I look like GI Joe or some sad 53 year old trying to be down
with the kids.
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| How do you do, fellow kids? |
Moving on to the food side of things. One of the toughest things that I have had to
deal during my treatment with was my inability to eat solid food for more than
2 months. Living on the dreaded “Ensure”
shakes each containing around 300 calories, I was supposed to be shoveling
down 8 a day. I don’t know about Ensure,
they should have been called Endure as I really disliked them and found it
tough to get 8 down me in a day. But if I needed any encouragement to drink
them, I didn’t have to look far, my new wife and the clan of Townend women (mum
and two sisters) were all on hand to encourage me (i.e. nag the living day lights out of me) to
ensure I got my fill of Endures.
Then in more recent weeks (probably 6 or so) I have taken to
solid foods once more, slowly at first but as each week has passed I have managed
to get more solids down which in turn meant I could reduce the Endures. You would have thought that now I was eating
solids the “encouragement” might ease off a little. How foolish of me, oh no Mein Führer Emma
Marsh had other ideas and has instigated a brutal feeding regime in an attempt
to put back on my skeletal frame the 1.5 stone I have lost during treatment. And
when I say skeletal frame I mean it. The
other morning having exited the shower I spotted what I could only describe as a
concentration camp survivor staring back at me.
So the daily feeding frenzy consists of 2 x Endure shakes,
breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, mid-afternoon snack and dinner. Now that
may sound all well and good but when for over two months you have survived on
nothing but liquids, the stomach shrinks and you completely lose your appetite.
At times I wondered if this was what it felt like for the
poor geese being force feed corn to fatten them up in order to make foie gras
from their expanded livers.
Anyway one positive thing on the eating front is that most
foods now taste OK with various exceptions, primarily anything with spices or
vinegar is a big no as it sets my mouth on fire. Just last weekend, having clear a plate of
fish of chips on the Friday night (salt but no vinegar), I got over confident
and as Emma was out, suggested to my older two daughters (I wasn’t sure Georgina
was quite ready yet) that we get a takeaway curry. I felt sure that a creamy korma would go down
OK, but I can assure you that I will not be trying that again for a very long
time. It felt like I was eating an extra
hot chicken phall. After one taste my mouth was on fire, I started sweating like
a pregnant nun and my mouth stung as though a swarm of angry hornets had lay
siege to it.
So I am pleased to report that in general I have made huge
steps on my road to recovery, particularly over the past 2-3 weeks. I still have some stubborn ulcers in my mouth
and my throat and mouth get extremely dry very quickly if I do not take on
water, but in general I am in a really good place, if still a little (a lot
really) too skinny.
I have even started
back at work, only from my home office and not full time yet, but that will
follow in the coming weeks. I forgot
quite how much I enjoy my work and what a great bunch of people I work with and
as for the senior executives, they have been so incredibly supportive of me
during this time, something I will always be extremely thankful for.
Anyway the next big steps in my recovery are the April
reviews, I have a date for the MRI scan and I'm waiting on the date for the all important
PET scan for around the same time. Once
those results are in we will see the oncologist to review them and find out if
I get the all clear or if further treatment is needed.
I will post an update as soon as I have the results. I
have had so many words of support and encouragement from people following my
blog, all of which have really helped me through the past few months, so I feel
it is only fair that I share with you the news be it good or bad.
Here’s to good news in April.
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| Shhh, mum's the word |
