Monday 6th July 2009

Chemo Cycle 1 Day 8

Not such a good day today. Nothing serious, but I've not been managing my diarrhoea very well over the last week and it all caught up with me last night.

The problem is when to take the Loperamide tablets. If I take them every day then I just get bunged up, so I try to take one every other day. However, when I was in London I took one each day to make sure I wasn't caught out, and the two days since I got back I had the Tramadol for my aching legs and I think that contributes to constipation too. So having been rather bunged up for too long, I stopped taking the Loperamide and unfortunately my body decided to hit me with 5 bouts of diarrhoea starting at midnight last night and going on through the night.

I've started the Loperamide again to try and regain control, but I'm still feeling a little dodgy and I've been tired and irritable all day as I had such a disturbed night. Hopefully I can get things back in balance tonight and get a better night's sleep.

Apart from this I'm still feeling ok from the chemo - in fact it's fair to say that I've been feeling better since I was on the chemo than I was before it. Unfortunately I think this may be a lot to do with the steroids, so it will be short-lived, but here's hoping.

In the meantime over the last week I've revived my long-standing interest in self-hypnosis as a way of focusing on recovery and relaxation. On and off for the last 20-odd years I've listened to relaxation therapy tapes as a way of relaxing and focusing the mind and have found them very successful. I know I'm a much more relaxed and laid-back person than I was before I learned these techniques, and I've made some personality changes in my life over the years too.

I do have some cancer-related CDs that someone lent me, but to be honest I find them irritating (it is often to do with the tone of voice and accent etc whether a tape works for you or not), so I have gone back to the process of making my own, which started the whole thing off for me years ago.

When I lived down South, I got a book out of the library (that is how long ago we are talking!) which had scripts in it for you to record yourself and I made a couple of recordings as an experiment. The other day, I transcribed one of those old recordings and made some changes to the relaxation section to make it work better for me. Recording your own voice is supposed to work quite well, because your mind hears your own voice instead of someone else and naturally accepts it more for that reason.

I have also replaced the "action" section in the middle - the suggestion section which comes in when you are fully relaxed and talks direct to your subconscious whilst you are in a relaxed "trance". I've added positive affirmations around my cancer treatment to focus my mind on healing etc.

I'm sorry if this sounds a little "alternative" for some, but trust me it works. I am very practical minded, so I have to see a genuine reason why something will or won't work (I get the concept of acupuncture and reflexology for example, but not Reiki or Bach Flower Remedies ...), but your subconscious reacts much better to instruction when it is free from other distractions, so a relaxed state is ideal. I'm not sure this is really "hypnosis", maybe it's more like meditation, but it helps me relax and sleep and hopefully will have a positive effect on my treatment too!

I'm trying to have a 20-minute session about 3 times a day at the moment.

That's all for now,

C.