After the consultant I met the cancer nurse who sat down with my husband and I and she was absolutely lovely. She gave me lots of leaflets to read and advised me to cut my hair, it was really long and was my pride and joy! On the way home in the car we both sat in silence, everything I had been told kept on going around and around my head, it was such a strange feeling, we stopped off at our local supermarket and while I was waiting for my husband to buy some food, I browsed around the magazines, I spotted an old school friend and said hello, she had heard about my illness and we briefly spoke about it, it was so surreal it was as if I was talking about someone else and not me!

I soon noticed that everyone’s attitude towards me changed, everyone was so kind but they all had that look on their faces, the kind of look that I really hate the ‘I feel so sorry for you look’, you may think that is a bit harsh but it becomes really boring after a while!

My husband was a real rock, night after night people called and he would sit out in the kitchen taking all the calls letting all the well wishers know how I was getting on, my chemo wasn’t due to start until the beginning of November as the consultants wanted me to build up my strength after the operation.

Have you ever gone on a diet or given up chocolate for lent and noticed how many commercials suddenly have chocolate or that forbidden goody on it! Well it seemed that every commercial was a well woman ad or any newspaper or magazine I picked up carried a cancer story in it, it was every where!

One of my husband’s friends wife had been battling with breast cancer for 18 months and after I came out of hospital we heard that she was in remission, I really wanted to meet up with her to see how she had got on and to find out what the chemo would be like. I kept on putting the call off and then one day we heard that she had secondary cancer in the bones! I can’t tell you how I felt for her!

I couldn’t make up my mind, should I shave all my hair off or should I wait until after the chemo and the first handfuls came out, it drove me around the bend worrying about it and finally I decided to cut it into a bob and wait, my mum bought me some beautiful scarves from Accessorize and I found a page on the web which showed you how to wear them in the style of Kylie Mynogue, I sat in front of the mirror practising for hours! I felt really sick about the thought of losing my hair, you don’t know how precious something like that feels when you know you are going to lose it, it was frightening, really frightening! I kept on telling myself that I should be strong and not worry about it I was made of more than hair! But honestly I was really really upset about it!

I was due to have my first chemo on a Wednesday, my eldest daughter came with me to the clinic and one of my friends came to visit, she came in armed with loads of glossy magazines, chocolates and Pringles! We sat in a corner and waited for the chemo to arrive, I was due to have two types, Taxol and Carboplatin, and was told the treatment would take about 4 hours in total. The carboplatin arrived and they gave it to me via IVF and it didn’t feel too bad, so far so good! My friend had to leave to go and pick up one of her daughters from school, and my daughter was getting a bit bored, so I told her to go home for a while and pop back later on (we lived 10 minutes away). Luckily for me she did!

While I was talking to a man about Benefits, one of the nurses came over to change my bags, the carboplatin had emptied out after an hour so she fixed up the taxol which was in a huge bag and would take 3 hours to drip through, only a couple of drops could have come down the tube before WHAM!!! I had a massive reaction, I couldn’t breathe, my chest felt like it was caving in! Apparently my whole body went bright red including my eye balls! The benefits man called over the nurses and they whipped the tube out of my hand quickly!