POST CHEMO HAIR LOSS (AND REGROWTH)
Post Chemo Hair Loss (and Regrowth)
Number of months since finishing chemo: 5
Amount of hair growing back: enough to requirement it cut
Amount of hair falling out: enough to wonder what on earth is going on?!
It’s been a while since I’ve written, mainly because I’ve been spending my time hanging around in this ever-continuing limbo and have no actualised developments to talk of. However, about a week past something kinda unexpected started to occur, and I thought that with no warning having been given to me about it by the hospital, it was well worth letting everyone know about this very delayed effect from the chemo:
As you every know I had the chemo and in the impact lost every my hair, eyebrows, eyelashes etc. Then within 3 months of finishing the treatment they had grown backwards and I already had quite a commonsensible concealment of hair. Well, it’s today 5 months since I finished chemo and my eyebrows and eyelashes are falling discover every over again! At first when a few of each fell discover I hoped it was just some freaky fortuity and that would be the end of it. However it’s today a week later, and they are both still reaching discover in large numbers. No-one at the hospital ever warned me that this could happen, so I’ve been pretty surprised to feature the least! Fortunately (at the moment anyway) it doesnt seem to be moving my hair, which is still tightly fixed in - I have even pulled at it to double check, which was a troubled moment because for every I knew a bounteous plunk could have become absent in my hands!
So, having had no indication from the hospital that the chemo could drive this activity months after finishing treatment, I turned to the internet to wager if anyone else discover there has experienced a kindred thing. And yes, it turns discover that this crapper be a side-effect, and that for individual eld after chemotherapy your eyelashes and eyebrows crapper move to fall discover cyclically. I couldn’t conceive it! I had absolutely no idea that could happen, and or that the chemo nurses and doctors could have failed to warn me and educate me for it doable happening. I knew that the chemo could damage your hair follicles, which is why your hair crapper grow backwards a different colouration and texture to how it was before you had chemo (for many their hair grows backwards curly, and though mine is pretty much still straight it definitely does have slightly more of a wave to it), but I just never translated this into it moving your eyebrows and eyelashes too. Of instruction when you think about it logically it seems manifest that it could, but sometimes unless someone sits you down and tells you these things they just don’t become to you. I rattling never imagined having lost my eyebrows and eyelashes erst from the chemo, that when it was over it could still keep happening. Even more scarily it seems from everything I have feature that it crapper keep happening for individual years, so I could be in a continual cycle of having my eyebrows and eyelashes grow and fall discover again for quite a while to come! Let this be a warning for anyone who has treatment, or knows someone who is - eyelashes and eyebrows may not be as imperishable as you expect when they grow backwards through after finishing chemotherapy!
The exclusive good thing at the moment is that despite it feeling like so many eyelashes and eyebrow hairs have fallen discover there can’t be some left, in actualised fact they just look a lot thinner, and to anyone who didn’t know it would belike just look like I’ve decided to have rattling thin eyebrows. I’m actually not sure what is worsened though, grouping knowing I’ve had chemo because my eyebrows have half thinned out, or them thinking I’ve chosen to garner my eyebrows to within an inch of their lives because I think it looks good?! With my eyelashes I crapper already wager newborn growth reaching through, so I don’t think it’s going to be very perceptible to anyone that they are falling out, unless huge clumps start disappearing. However, I’m embattled today that anything newborn that grows through may well be falling discover again in just a few months time…
Bizarrely, in rank contrast, my hair has today grown backwards sufficiently enough that I actually had to have it cut last Friday! It was my first haircut in nearly a year, and it felt very strange to be walking into a hairdressers again. It also felt great, like added step towards getting backwards to doing connatural things. I haven’t exactly got long flowing locks yet, but it was starting to get a taste unruly around my ears and neck, so I got it neatened up a taste and thinned discover slightly through the top. My hair has grown backwards very similarly to how it was before I had the chemo, except that strangely it seems to be thicker over the top. I don’t know whether or not that’s just because it’s still so short, but my hairdresser was telling me added computer of hers has had chemo, and her hair came backwards thicker on top too. Maybe it’s added hair follicle abnormalcy that they don’t warn you about?!
Em
More Delays Than Network Rail
Number of days since last chemo: 21
Number of days until incoming chemo: 7 (cell counts permitting)
Number of chemo treatments left: 1
As today was due to be the day of my final treatment I’m sure you crapper guess what’s happened - I’ve been delayed because of low WBC counts again. The Chemo Suite phoned me yesterday salutation to support that my WBC calculate is exclusive 1 (when it should be 1.5), which is the lowest it has ever been. It seems that in spite of a lower dose of Carboplatin, and a instruction of GCSF injections, those white cells are just refusing to mutiply!
I can’t feature I was specially surprised. It has been a wrinkled pair of weeks since I last wrote. I have been rattling dizzy and exhausted, and was worried that it was symptomatic of a low flushed murder count, which would mean having to have a murder transfusion. But, after murder tests at the start of last week, I saw my oncologist last Wednesday and he addicted that my haemoglobin calculate was high enough for me not to requirement one, which was a relief. Instead he formal tablets to try to help the dizziness. On Tuesday, after feeling no improvement at all, my gynae-oncology woman spoke to my oncologist again and he wise that we call discover the GP for me to be patterned over. So, a very pleasant doctor came discover the incoming day and formal some newborn tablets, which are still to do anything, though I’m still holding discover a very faint hope it’s just because it’s taking a few days for them to physique up in my system before I feel a difference.
Because I’ve been so wobbly on my pins I didn’t go to hospital for my usual pre-chemo murder tests yesterday, a woman came discover to me instead. At the moment I am struggling to do much more than get up and down the stairs, but the chemo woman who phoned me yesterday about my murder test results warned me to be extra certain about mixing with anyone who might have some bugs or germs because my white cells are so low, so it doesn’t rattling matter that I’m not confident of going discover I suppose!
The fact that my counts are even lower than normal, despite measures to try to increase them, just goes to exhibit how attrited discover my embody is. And I have rattling felt it this time - there was no way I felt able to get through added dose at the moment, final digit or not. It has made me actualise too just how long it’s going to take after the chemo has finished for me to start feeling well enough to go discover even for a cup of coffee, let lonely do anything ‘normal’ like walk around town or go backwards to work. Still, that is way too far in the future to think about. This incoming week is every about trying to get lots of rest and rest, and getting myself primed to go through digit final treatment. I rattling can’t wait to have the luxury of time to get myself meliorate after having the last one, and not be under the usual three week time frame that the chemo program imposes. And I think from the way I have felt after this dose, getting myself meliorate erst the chemo is finished is going to take a very long time.
Em
They Think It’s All Over - It Is Now!
Number of chemo treatments left: 0!!!
Level of surprise at the sudden end to my treatment: high
Level of comfort at the sudden end to my treatment: even higher!
I know, I can’t conceive it, I’ve managed to finish my chemotherapy with no clew of needles, drugs, anti-sickness tablets or feat time! How? Well on Friday, just a few hours after I posted my last journal entry, my oncologist phoned to feature that considering my low murder radiophone counts and how ill I still feel after my 5th dose, he didn’t think it was a good idea to near me through some more chemotherapy cycles.
My first activity to him suggesting that was actually quite perverse and anxious, which may sound disturbed - I mean why wasn’t I immediately thrilled by the thought not having to have some more chemo - but chemotherapy is given to you as a instruction of treatment, and so consequently you feel you should rank the whole instruction in visit for it to work. Obviously in actuality that’s not at every the case, and within 1/2 hr of the sound conversation I realised how nonmeaningful that idea was. The actualised actuality of my status is that my radiophone counts are very low and I’m still rattling dizzy, weak and exhausted from the last dose, so my embody would rattling struggle to manage with added dose. As my oncologist spinous discover too, having a ‘stand-alone’ dose of chemo so far unconnected from every the others would make it less effective, and therefore on equilibrise between how much good it would do, and how ill it would make me, it belike becomes more harmful then helpful. On top of that, my CA125 levels (a accelerator in your murder that is sometimes produced by ovarian cancer cells and therefore crapper be an indicator of ovarian cancer) are today well within the connatural range, and haven’t denaturized since last Sept after about my ordinal dose of chemo, so digit further treatment would be unlikely to edit it some further. Plus, my oncologist would hardly suggest dropping my final cycle unless he rattling thought I shouldn’t have it.
Once I’d thought about every those things logically it didn’t take me long to start to feel resistless comfort at not having to go through the whole impact again. Like I said, I still feel so ill from the last digit that I had been rattling worried about how I would physically manage with added dose anyway, and had actually already thought there was belike a good quantity I would end up in hospital after it. Amid the significance of comfort though there came quite a large anticlimax. I know that may sound ridiculous, but as much as I was dreading the final dose I was mentally embattled to have it, and the suddeness of the decision to equilibrate it came as quite a shock. I know from my first instruction of chemotherapy that when you have your final treatment it’s so pleasant to ordered there thinking ‘it’s the last time they’ll ever have to find a vein, the last time I have to ordered in digit of these chairs’ etc. You get to feature goodbye to every the nurses and to thank them, and most of every you get to walk discover of the Cancer Centre telling yourself you’ll never have to go back. Psychologically it’s a definite impact of detachment, and a means of drawing a line not under the cancer itself, but sure under the chemotherapy, helping to give you a starting saucer for moving forwards.
To hear that I wasn’t going to get that came as quite a surprise, and left me not rattling knowing what to do with myself. Still, I had to wait until my clinic designation with my oncologist yesterday before it was definitely confirmed. When I saw him though he said as he had over the phone, that he didn’t think I could physically manage added dose. Having just struggled to walk down the corridor of the hospital to the clinic I could hardly disagree with him! One thing that helped to dispell the end of missing the final dose was not just knowing that I couldn’t physically get through some more, but also that I coincidentally saw a woman from the Chemo Suite while I was waiting, and got to chitchat to her and feature thank you and goodbye. It helped to draw a line under the chemotherapy in some diminutive way. On top of that, after doing some equilibrise tests because of my dizziness, my oncologist said he wants me to have a head CT, just to be on the innocuous lateral and to get me thoroughly patterned out. So, without time to disrupt for breath, I am already existence swept along into the post-chemo stages of check-ups and scans. Because of instruction null ever rattling ends with cancer, it just progresses onto the incoming stage…
Em
Hair Regrowth
Number of weeks until I find discover whether the cancer is back: 4
Fear levels about that appointment: high
Positives in the meantime: more and more hair growing backwards everyday!
It’s been about a month since I last wrote, and I have spent the majority of that time pretty much unable to get the thought that the cancer may have become backwards discover of my head. The days seem to be locomotion by at an excruciatingly andante measure while I wait for the date of my ordinal construe and the analyse designation following it to become around. I’m going backwards to wager my oncologist on 25th April, and I am rattling not looking forward to having to step through that door and hear what he has to say. Of instruction if it’s good programme then every this vexation will have been in vain, and I just have my fingers tightly decussate that will be the case.
It’s not so much the vexation about whether or not the spots on my viscus are cancer in some ways, more what instruction of state they will want to take if they are. From the moment I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer my main engrossment has ever been retentive my fertility. I know that might sound crazy, I mean most grouping would think existence cancer-free and healthy would be the main concern, but I so desperately want children that the possiblity it might never happen has ever seemed worsened somehow. Fortunately, so far every the surgery I have had has been relatively conservative, and I have got absent with exclusive losing digit of my ovaries. But now, with the existence that the cancer has not exclusive not been killed soured by the chemo but has also spread, then I wonder whether the quantity of having a child is rattling fading into the distance. Every time the cancer has become back, and with every treatment I have the vexation is ever there: is this going to be the time I lose my fertility? So far I’ve managed to get through 3 pretty major dealings and 2 courses of chemotherapy without losing it, but maybe today is the time my luck will finally start to separate out. If the cancer has become back, and spread, then I crapper just imagine walking into that analyse designation and hearing them feature the dreaded text ‘full surgery’, which involves a hysterectomy nonnegative a few added bits for good measure. I think I requirement to go backwards to crossover my fingers…
Anyway, sight as every of that is still weeks absent I thought it was time I wrote about something else that has been happening since my chemo finished: my hair is growing back! Oh yes, I am today sporting a full ordered of eyelashes, eyebrows, and a commonsensible concealment of hair. Not intense considering it’s less than 3 months since I had my final chemo treatment.
In fact my hair started growing backwards about 5-6 weeks after I finished chemo. The first things to become backwards through were my eyebrows and eyelashes, which quite surprised me because they were the last things to fall out, so I thought they might take the longest to become back. While I was having treatment the thought of my eyelashes growing backwards ever puzzled me a taste - would it itch or be scratchy, would it look undignified to have rattling brief eyelashes while they were reaching through, would they become backwards patchy? None of those things happened though. I couldn’t even feel them become through, and erst they started growing they came through rattling quickly, so the vexation about having to walk around with stumpy lashes never materialised. Now they are already backwards to the length they were before they fell out, and I’ve even tried discover mascara on them which was a very strange experience after not having attrited eye makeup for so long!
The aforementioned thing happened with my eyebrows in that thay didn’t itch when they started growing through. Unlike my eyelashes though they did go through a strange form where they were more stubble than actualised hairs. Fortunately I had some hats that came down quite low, so I just wore those for the week or so that it took for them to grow longer and look a taste more normal!
In oppositeness to both my eyebrows and eyelashes my hair seems to be growing backwards much more slowly, though even that has become backwards through much quicker than I thought it would. Again it hasn’t been patchy either, or itchy. In fact it has been rattling soft and lovely, and felt so pleasant and soft when it first started reaching through that I frequently found myself movement on the sofa, watching tv and absentmindedly stroking it! In the last pair of weeks though it has got a taste longer and thicker, and isn’t quite so strokable. It’s actually got to the saucer today where it’s long enough to start looking messy when I wake up in the morning, which is a downside to having hair that I’d completely forgotten about! I didn’t actualise how used I got to just existence able to listing discover of bed, patch on a hat and be done. Now I actually have to make a offense effort if I leave the house!
Along with that downside to my hair growing backwards is added very galling digit - the requirement to have to epilation my legs again. I spent a blissful 6 months waking up every morning with smooth legs, and today it’s backwards to using a razor again! Mind you, I’m sure not going to moan about it - it’s just so pleasant to be getting my hair back. It feels like a visible clew that the filthy chemotherapy drugs are employed their way discover of my system, and I’m getting healthier again. Now I just have to keep my fingers decussate the MRI construe shows the aforementioned thing…
Em
Tags: cancer therapy, boob cancer, mentality cancer, cancer, cancer doctor