‘I need to have people around me’

15 June, 2022 | By Ingrid Fuchs

The sun is shining after a few days of strong wind and lots of rain. I only had a single dose of chemo a few days ago, which doesn’t give me too many side effects but I still felt a bit down. I think it’s mainly because I still can feel the lump and I don’t think it has shrunk much since the last ultrasound.I know I won’t know for certain until after my scan at the beginning of April but I’m finding it hard to shift the thought.

Also, I had no friends to go walking or running with today and my husband wasn’t home in the evening, which meant that I spent most of the day by myself. During the last five months, I’ve noticed that I need to have people around me. I’m not very good at spending the whole day by myself. I shouldn’t complain though, most days are filled with seeing friends.

Since I was feeling a bit down, I took a little note out of the jar of love with a sweet and underlined message from a colleague saying, how I always smile and that I am a ray of sunshine. Very nice – I better do something to get that image back.

My cough still hasn’t gone, it is much more manageable but it is still there. I’m trying not to worry about it anymore, it’s probably from the chemo. Since the start of chemo, I have to give myself injections to boost my white cell count. This is to reduce neutropenia and with that the increase of infection. Luckily, as I’m a nurse, I’m not squeamish but I can imagine that this can have a huge impact on some people with cancer.

My son had to go back to Singapore for a year as part of his PhD. I thought I was going to be very sad but it was just a quick goodbye as I had a chemo appointment to get to. I felt OK because I probably had mentally prepared myself for it.

Also, I couldn’t help but think that this was nothing in comparison to the poor women and children in Ukraine who had to leave their husbands and partners behind to fight in this awful war, and not even know if they would see them alive again.

I’m so lucky to have very few side effects from chemo. On Facebook support pages I read about other women complaining about very painful burning sensations in their feet or tingling and numbness in their feet and hands. It makes me feel grateful that I have not experienced any of it and still can walk or run for more than 10 kilometres. It all could have been a lot worse.

I have always been fascinated with cancer and dying. When I was in my twenties, I read all the books by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a Swiss- American psychiatrist who wrote many books about death and dying and was a pioneer in near-death studies. Today, I had a look at my bookshelves and took quite a few books off about this topic, books that I have collected over the years and plan to read again.

At the moment I’m reading Glittering A Turd by Kris Hallenda. She was diagnosed with secondary breast cancer (stage 4) at the age of 23 and, in response, set up the charity CoppaFeel. She is a breast cancer survivor for more than 12 years, which is absolutely amazing and so inspiring.

This blog was originally published in the Nursing Times. Many thanks to them for sharing Ingrid's story.