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What it’s like to go through chemotherapy at 26

Photo credit: Courtesy of Róisín Lanigan
Photo credit: Courtesy of Róisín Lanigan

From Red Online

Ask anyone, and they’d probably agree that it’ll be a long time before we forget this past summer. Football (almost) came home, and it was the hottest one in recent memory. For most of us that was an excuse to get drunk more often, go sunbathing more often, enjoy ourselves more often. For me, though, this summer was slightly different.

While most of my friends were enjoying Aperols and day festivals, I was exhausted, nauseous and stuck indoors. In February of this year, you see, at the age of 26, I was one of the unlucky 5,600 women under 45 in the UK to be diagnosed with breast cancer.

Because breast cancer is extremely rare for women in their 20s, my treatment plan was aggressive - surgery, years of hormone therapy, radiotherapy and, the most terrifying part, months of gruelling chemotherapy. So from April until September this year, I missed the most glorious summer I've ever known to exist, while I had my body pumped full of poisonous chemicals in a bid to kill off the cancer that was trying to kill me.

So admittedly, it’ll be a long time before I forget this summer too.

"Nobody gets breast cancer at your age"

I hate cancer cliches. I hate being called brave, or a "warrior", and I hate it when people refer to my experience as a "journey". But for lack of a better term, my "cancer journey" began all the way back in January. It was a Friday night and I was skint and hungover from the party season, so I was spending it in bed watching TV. As you do, I was casually feeling myself up. When I felt a lump in my breast, I panicked, but was reassured by the doctor the following Monday - and then again at the hospital later that week - who told me not to worry. "Nobody gets breast cancer at your age", they said. Unfortunately they were wrong.

After the initial shock of diagnosis wore off, I was determined to get better and back to my "normal life” as soon as possible. But I was terrified of chemo. The very word "chemotherapy" conjures up our worst, nightmarish images of a cancer patient. We immediately think of vomiting, hair loss, weakness and generally, all the detritus of being "a sick person". I didn’t - and still don’t - want to be seen as a sick person. I didn’t want cancer to become the entirety of my identity, and so I decided to be as active as possible in maintaining a normal(ish) life while undergoing eight rounds of toxic, life-saving drug infusions every three weeks.

I was lucky my job allowed me to work from home on the days I was feeling awful, and on the days my immune system was too destroyed to take the tube to work without catching someone’s cold and potentially ending up in hospital. Being able to work was a massive help; while a lot of people choose to come out of work while undergoing treatment, for me the benefit of having something to think about all day that wasn’t cancer was enormous.

Making myself feel "normal"

During chemotherapy, I put more time, money and effort into my appearance than I’ve ever done in my life. Before cancer, I was pretty lazy. I bought whatever product was cheapest and easiest. Aside from my bushy eyebrows, there wasn’t much I paid special attention to in terms of beauty. But now, faced with the prospect of losing my eyebrows (and my hair, and my eyelashes), beauty took on a new significance. I paid to have my brows microbladed, so even if they fell out during chemo, I wouldn’t be too horrified. I also elected to cold-cap, an experimental treatment available in most NHS hospitals across the UK, where patients undergoing chemotherapy wear a helmet filled with ice or cold gel.

The sort of medical brain-freeze it induces forces hair follicles to go dormant, meaning (hopefully) chemotherapy drugs won’t attack them, and cause the alopecia it’s usually associated with. It makes each infusion take longer, as the cold-capping takes ages to freeze and then cool down again, and it is agonisingly painful, at least for the first 20 minutes, but using it has been the best chemo decision I made. My hair has thinned, but if you didn’t know me you wouldn’t notice, and being able to look in the mirror and see myself - not cancer - has been hugely beneficial to my mental health. The rest of my body hair has all fallen out, obviously, but to be honest, that’s been a bit of a silver lining.

There’s a huge amount of pressure on cancer patients to "stay positive" and "keep going" during treatment, but chemotherapy especially can be an incredibly long, drawn-out and painful process. Physically, mentally and emotionally.

Photo credit: Courtesy of Róisín Lanigan
Photo credit: Courtesy of Róisín Lanigan

I was determined to make things as easy for myself as possible in the hopes that it would go by faster, and so - along with trying to look like I didn’t have cancer - I also relied heavily on alternative therapies to go alongside my medical treatment. I live in London, which meant I was able to make use of the great facilities of Breast Cancer Haven. Before being diagnosed, I was absolutely terrible at relaxing or slowing down, but through this charity I was able to try out reiki therapy, acupuncture and aromatherapy massages. My hospital also has a Maggie’s Centre close by, which offers yoga, pilates and various counselling sessions.

All of these things helped, but that’s not to say chemotherapy wasn’t hugely difficult. I can say without hesitation it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. For the first half of my treatment I had four infusions of a drug combination known as AC chemotherapy. Made up of cyclophosphamide and doxorubicin, known in cancer circles as the "red devil" because of its colour and side-effects, this stuff is hardcore. I was extremely ill after each infusion. The only way I can describe the feeling is like the worst hangover you’ve ever had in your life, except you didn’t even get to drink or have fun. And the hangover lasts for around five days.

Even when I wasn’t feeling nauseous and fatigued, I had to be extremely careful not to pick up any colds or infections while my immune system was compromised. If at any point I caught an infection and became neutropenic (a condition where the body’s white blood cells fall to a dangerously low level) I was at risk of sepsis, which can often be fatal. I had to monitor my temperature constantly, and go to hospital if it ever dipped under, or went over, what was considered normal. Having that fear hanging over you, even in the back of your mind, for months on end, is nothing short of mentally exhausting.

Aside from the medical side-effects, chemotherapy also pretty much destroys your social life. It means no drinking, no crowded places (which wipes out essentially every summer festival and beer garden in south London), no holidays (planes are tiny boxes filled with germs, sorry to tell you), and it means being isolated a lot of the time. I was lucky in that my wonderful boyfriend, parents and friends took it in turns to come with me to hospital, visited my house to cook for me, and remembered to send me memes on WhatsApp when I was feeling shitty and lonely. But I still felt incredibly isolated.

Twitter was a place where I could be myself and not 'that girl with cancer'

Worse still, a lot of the breast cancer communities, both online and IRL, are, for obvious reasons, geared towards older women. This meant that for a lot of my concerns and questions - like, when would my sex drive go back to normal? When can I drink prosecco again? How do I tell my housemates I have cancer? - there simply wasn’t any place to go or people to ask. Instead, I found social media became a huge outlet for me. People attack it for allowing us to show a curated, essentially fake version of ourselves, but for me it was a lifeline. Twitter was a place I could go to complain about Love Island and make bad jokes and feel part of a community of people my own age again. A place where I could be myself and not 'that girl with cancer'.

This week, I finally finish chemotherapy. It’s been an incredibly long process and even when I finish, I’ll still have surgery, radiotherapy and years of pills and injections to look forward to. But I’m alive, and I did it. I gave up one summer so I can hopefully enjoy decades more.

✨ I FINISHED CHEMO TODAY! ✨I’m so brave!!!!! 1 like = 1 prayer

A post shared by Roisin Lanigan (@rosielanners) on Aug 28, 2018 at 9:18am PDT

Now, where’s the prosecco?

Follow Róisín on Twitter.

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