The True Facts of What Chemo Did to ME

Chemo and how it affected my body !! 


Some of the things that chemo did to my body during the 6 months, the first things that happened was like most my hair fell out, and yes you loose your hair down below all pubic hair, leg hair, underarm hair and head hair fell out. 
For some reason I kept my eyebrow and eyelashes some people loose these but I did manage to keep mine. 


The biggest thing that affected me was my stomach it pretty much stopped working sometimes it felt like my food wouldn't go down into my stomach at all and sat on top. Other times the food would sit for a little while then come back up about 4 hours or so later, this was anything I ate although at times food eaten earlier in the day would come out but yet other things I'd eaten later would be kept down. I don't know why and was never given an answer as it's not known why. 


My nails grew really quickly but i soon noticed that they had ridges in them and this then showed each chemo cycle as a ridge. 


I did get constipated at the start and then towards the last cycle once I had lost all the hair in my bowel the stools became soft and watery and it felt like I had the runs all the time. It was better than constipation. 


Chemo Brian / Dumb I call it when you cant process things or know what you want to say but doesnt quite come out right ! Thats what it is like to have chemo brain, the week of chemo was the worst out of all, towards the end of the three weeks it would improve but I would class myself as dumb during this time :) 
I even stopped typing on here because my brain couldn't deal with it to be honest I couldn't type words together.
One day I remember getting angry at my partner as I had said "can you get the clothes from the wardrobe" translation " can you get clothes from the washing line " close but no cigar !!!! He didn't know what I meant and got frustrated because I got angry more at myself than him for being so messed up. 


My skin went dry and flaked badly in places, my skin felt like it was drinking the Vitamin E cream up. 


My eyes well lets just say I feel a little blinder now :( My glasses have helped me heaps but now I think I will need to go and have them re assessed as they feel like they have deteriorated more. I seem to squint a lot more at the TV and things seem to be unfocused all the time. 


Dry mouth and build up of mucus is really irritating and can be a problem especially in the morning when you feel like you are going to be sick from it. Your skin gets thin and I cut myself and hurt myself easily enough with just a knock, at one time I tore all the skin down to flesh on my toe. It takes a lot longer to heal as well.