I had my second dose of chemo 21 days after the first one and it all went pretty much the same way. The first week I was really sick, the second week just generally feeling unwell and very tired. And just as it was getting close to chemo day I started to feel well again.

Of course the inevitable happened and my hair started to fall out. I was told to expect this to start happening about 4 to 6 weeks into the treatment and probably from about three weeks in I had taken to giving my hair a little tug every now and again to see if it was coming out yet. It started quite slowly and for a while every time I pulled it I could still feel resistance but a few hairs would come away in my fingers. I stopped brushing it in the hope it would slow the process, which in hindsight was just a bit silly but I suppose only another woman would really understand just how traumatic it is to loose all your hair. Which is why I was so glad to have Nonna Anna around.
Sometimes it's good to have woman around because women quite simply understand things that men do not. The first shower I had after I realised my hair was indeed starting to fall out left me with half my hair on my head and the other half on the shower floor. That was a bit upsetting but Nonna was there to calm me down. And for the next few days it started coming out at a rate of knots. Gianni made a joke out of it because that's what he does and no malice is ever intended. Marco fretted about it because he doesn't like to see me upset. And then one morning Nonna, in typical no nonsense *woman* fashion got out the clippers and took the rest of it off. I have to say it felt better like that. It had got to the point where I couldn't even eat a meal without my plate being covered in hair and it was constantly down the back of my jumper and very uncomfortable. Gianni bless his heart was sat waiting on the bed for her to finish with me so she could do his hair as well as he'd promised, but I let him off the hook. I figured he would either look very sexy with a shaved head, which would piss me off. Or he would look really stupid and then every time I looked at him I'd realise how stupid I looked too. So he cut a break that morning but he was more than willing to go out in sympathy with me and I do love him for that.
Nonna went out the next day and bought some really pretty, very soft fabric and made me some bandannas that felt very comfortable to wear and she knitted me a woolly hat to wear in bed to keep my head warm at night. Marco covered up all the mirrors in the house deciding that if I couldn't look in the mirror I wouldn't think about it so much and I thought that was a sweet thing to do.
So there you have it�.. My hair was all finally gone and the world didn't end after all.

The benefits of having no hair�.According to Gianni.

I don't have to waste a lot of time waxing or shaving my legs.
I save money on expensive shampoo's and conditioners.
No more bad hair days.
He can say anything he likes to me and I can't look surprised.
All I need is a lollypop and I can do a great impersonation of Telly Savales
I can dry my hair by walking out of the bathroom quickly enough to create a breeze.
No more dandruff
I can make fun of bald people without guilt....

Just after my third dose of chemo I had a lovely surprise. Marco and Gianni's mum were coming over from Italy for a visit, which I was looking forward to but also a little reluctant about. I'm not very good at being sick and the thought of having visitors while I was going through the worst of it wasn't very appealing to me. When Marco got back from the airport they had my mum with them as well, which was a total shock and a wonderful surprise. Its funny but no matter how old you get there are times when you just need your mum and this was one of them. My son Scott flew in from Sydney the following weekend to see his grandma (and me of course) so I had my whole family together and it really was the best medicine.

As far as the chemo goes I think I'd gotten off quite lightly so far. The second dose probably had more effect on me than the first but I guess that was normal. When I look at the list of *possible* side effects though I was doing ok I think. The nausea and hair loss was expected. The dry mouth and gritty eyes were bearable. And the only obscure side effects I'd noticed was that I'd lost all sense of smell and had no taste and my nails and teeth were changing colour they seemed to have gotten a little bit darker since I'd had the second dose. Another problem that was quite painful was that I had a nose full of sores. My GP gave me some ointment to try and help ease this a little and it did to an extent. But it was something that never cleared up until after I had finished my treatment.

By the halfway point in my Chemo we had a meeting set up with Professor Quenten Walker to arrange a starting time for my radiation therapy. To say he was a character was definitely a huge understatement. I suppose he must have been maybe 55 or 60 years old and totally eccentric. He had very long grey hair, which he tied back into a ponytail and he was such an odd bod but very funny too and I loved him on sight. My GP later told me that he was one of these people that was stuck in the 70s LOL He spoke to us about treatment, how it would be given and how often. Marco asked him a question (in his thick Italian accent) and Quenten looked at him and said "Oh you're a foreigner? And Marco bristled just a little bit and said quite indignantly "No I'm not a foreigner, I'm Italian." I thought that was so funny and giggled uncontrollably for a few minutes. Quenten set up a date for us to go down to Royal Brisbane women's hospital for a set up appointment two weeks after I had finished my Chemo.

On having no hair and I'm sorry if this seems to be a recurring theme through my writing but it was a big thing at the time and it had gone from the morbid fear, that I'd had before I lost it. To kind of a fascination once it had gone.
I barely had enough hair on my head to even consider calling it a five 0-Clock shadow yet every time I got in the shower the first thing I did was shampoo my hair? And it wasn't until I actually felt my head that I remembered that I didn't have any hair to wash! And why did I still wrap my head in a towel when I got out of the shower I wonder.....Just habit maybe? And another thing, I thought that hair cells are hair cells and that the chemo killed them all. Yet at this stage all the hair on my head was gone but the hair on my legs and arms was still firmly in place and showing no signs of falling out any time soon.....I found that very strange. And right through out my chemotherapy the hair on my legs never fell out. My eyebrows and eyelashes thinned considerably but never disappeared completely. I lost all the hair on my head, arms and *other* places but never on my legs�.It was quite annoying really LOL.

The one thing that was becoming more and more noticeable as I progressed through each treatment was that the veins in my right arm were starting to really hurt. I was told that the drugs were very harsh and that my veins would really suffer through this as my treatment progressed. But I wasn't prepared for how sore they were going to get. This also made the task of taking my blood more difficult and quite often it would take ages to fill each vial with enough blood to do the necessary tests every week. I guess it was made worse by the fact that all my treatment and blood tests etc had to be done from my right arm as I'd had the nodes removed from under my left arm. I found that a hot pack placed on the sore arm helped ease this a little bit.

Another thing I was aware of that my periods had stopped by about the third dose. I'd been told that this may happen and probably it was a good thing at the time because I had enough on my plate without having to deal with that monthly misery on top of it.

I was also starting to get the mouth sores I had been told about. But not throughout my whole mouth. They were confined to just my tongue, I had a coating of what looked like small, white pimples all over the surface of my tongue. That was very sore and very uncomfortable and there wasn't much I could do about it either, the only thing that seemed to give me any relief was to eat ice cream or ice blocks

The biggest mistake I made while going through chemo was deciding to make a trip home to Italy in the middle of it all. Marco had to go home on urgent business and I didn't want him to go without me. So a lot of calls were made, a lot of faxes were exchanged between doctors here in Queensland and in Italy and despite a lot of unhappy grumbling from my doctors here. It was arranged for me to have my fifth dose of chemo at the San Raffaele hospital in Milan. I don't tend to travel very well at the best of times and even though we left Australia in my *good* week and I had a few days to get over the jet lag before I had to have chemo. It was really bad idea. They were very nice at the hospital in Italy and it was all done pretty much the same way as it was at home. Except the drugs were fed though from an IV bag not by hand with a syringe so it went through a big quicker and I felt sick straight away. And I stayed sick the whole time we were there. We were in Italy for two weeks and I got home just in time for my last dose of chemo.

I'd noticed something a little unexpected before I went in for my last dose of chemo. The hair on my head had already started growing back. Nobody could give me an explanation for this, not the doctor nor the staff at the chemo ward. It was just one of those quirks of nature. But I was surprised that it had started to grow back even before I'd finished all my treatment.

Getting myself motivated to go for my last dose of treatment was harder than I thought it would be. I know it shouldn't have been, that I should have been over the moon about it, knowing I would never again feel ill like this again (well that was the plan anyway so fingers crossed) I think a lot of it was to do with the fact that each dose of chemo left me feeling worse that the one before. I guess it was understandable really with each dose I had the drugs built up more and more in my system so obviously I was going to feel more sick and more tired. But Marco's very gentle pushing ensured that I did go. And when we were all done I thanked the nursing staff for everything they had done and told them that I hoped I never set eyes on any of them again. They all took it in the spirit with which it was meant and wished Marco and I good luck with everything. And that was that, I was done with chemo and I was 100% certain that the hardest part of this whole ordeal was behind me now.