Friendly Faces

As I said last Thursday, I was really concerned about my friends coming to visit me at Birmingham. My Mum had been visited by a few of her friends and even that was difficult for me, as obviously I wasn't feeling or looking well, at all. The morning that my friends were due to arrive, was the first time that I really saw myself and the effects caused by the chemotherapy. I was pretty disgusted if I'm being totally honest and was scared of what was looking back at me in the mirror.

My mum had wheeled me to the bathroom, where I went to the toilet for the first time in a while and she had to stand with her back to me, in case I fell over. Luckily, this did not occur! However, she then pushed me (in the wheelchair) to the sink and the mirror on the wall above. It was my eyes that scared me the most. They had sunk so far into my skull, ruined lips were pulled back over scum covered teeth. Grim. However, I had also had no opportunity to shave since arriving in Birmingham, so I had an inch long covering of facial fuzz around my jaw. I wanted to look as well as possible for my friends and so I decided that it needed to go. Unfortunately, I was too weak to hold the razor up to my face and was still barely in control of my own limbs, therefore Mum had to get rid of the "beard". She took the plastic razor (the kind you find in a cheap hotel) and after wetting my face, slowly, stroke by stroke, shaved off almost all the hair. A fine job she did too! After that, I wanted to have a bath, however, this was far more problematic than the shaving. Mum pretty much lifted me out of the wheelchair onto the bath and a kind of shelf then lowered me down into the water. It took a long while for me to wash completely and I couldn't bend to wash my own legs, so Mum had to soak and wipe them, making sure that my Hickman line did not dip into the water, in case it got infected and needed replacing. After the bath, I was then once more lifted and put back into my wheelchair and then taken to my bed looking slightly better and feeling much cleaner! With the help of Mum again, I was then dressed into fresh pyjamas and helped back into my bed.

My friends were soon to arrive and I was beginning to regain a little movement in my legs so had a slow practise of walking a few steps before they arrived, just in case they wanted to move into the social area in the Teenage Cancer Trust ward. Also, I had started eating the night before and it felt like a switch had been flicked inside me! I drank 4 pints of milk within the hour and was still demanding more. I was also ravenous, eating many hash browns which the nurses had especially fetched from McDonalds for me. When my friends did arrive, I nearly wept. I hadn't seen anyone other than my family and a few of Mum's friends for quite a few weeks, but any worries that I did have about them seeing me in such a state, pretty much disappeared immediately. I spent the time laughing and smiling and it was such a relief to have a semblance of normality back in my life. If anyone else is spending extended periods in hospital, I can't say how important it was for me to see people I loved and missed. Once my friends had gone and I had slept for a few hours after sheer exhaustion due to me being so active throughout the day, I was invigorated and rejuvenated. I couldn't shut up about how much I enjoyed seeing my friends and catching up on all the things going on at school. The chemotherapy was messing around with my head a bit, so I kept remembering little snippets of earlier that day and I would then regale them to anyone that would listen.

It was another really important day in my treatment and I believe that it was probably the turning point in me starting to believe that I'd really get better. Obviously there was a long way to go still, but that day was a real ray of hope and often in the following months I would look back on it and it would bring me so much hope and comfort when difficulties arose and times became hard.