I don't really talk about how the chemo is affecting my body, and I normally laugh it off saying ahya my face so cui now. But I want to tell you how it really affects me, because it has a different effect on individuals. So here, educate yourselves so you have a better understanding.
1. Not everyone who goes through chemo goes bald
All the people I know who are going through chemo now have all gone bald. I, on the other hand, get to keep my hair. My doctor told me this kind of treatment isn't the go bald kind, don't worry. Balding was the least of my worries because I was familiar with that. I've seen that. And all uncles and aunties who have gone through or are going through chemo are all bald and they gave me a headsup on what to expect. But keeping my hair isn't the only difference. You know how in 50/50 JGL loses all his hair and he says he looks like voldemort and he felt ugly and all? Well he still looked fantastic with no hair. Not only because it's JGL *_* but because that was the only thing. Hair loss. Let me tell you how it's been affecting me, and it's going to sound ugly (pun unintended) so don't read on if you cannot stomach the details.
2. Dry skin, everywhere
So if you've seen me since I started my treatment, I really look like crap. Before the doctor prescribed a specific kind of moisturiser for me in the second cycle, my face was extremely dry. You could see flakes of skin all over my eyebrows, nose, chin. FLAKES. It's like having face dandruff, very horrible. I couldn't move my face without it hurting. I couldn't talk without it hurting. Basically, when my friends made me laugh it felt like my face was on fire. After the second cycle, my face got less dry, but my scalp is starting to dry up. So yay hello dandruff. I've become so paranoid about having flakes all over my shirts and all my clothes are dark-coloured so another yay -.-
3. The mother of all breakouts, acne fast and furious
Again, if you've been hanging out with me you know the condition of my face. Cui. It's not just one or two pimples on the face, it includes the discolouring of the skin, peeling, bumps everywhere, dried up pus that I have no control over because I don't even know what's happening on my face when I'm not staring at the mirror 24/7. So I could moisturise my face and put my cream and look decent before leaving the house, and catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror in the mall and have a mini meltdown inside. It really looks bad. If I looked grey before I got hospitalised for anaemia, now I look red, black, grey, purple. I always scroll through my Instagram and count the days since I had good skin. I took a selfie three days after my first cycle because I was finally out of the house. And in that same week, bam. Fast and furious. Acne barging through. Because of this, I spend twice as long getting ready. I wash my face religiously, mask it up every day, spend almost an hour moisturising it with a cotton pad and applying whatever creams the doctor prescribed very slowly because it hurts. You know how you swipe your face with your hands in the shower to get the water off your eyes? That stings so badly. My brows feel bruised and it hurts to wash it even though the soap doesn't sting. Just touching it or applying any kind of pressure on my skin hurts. And because they are so bad, they get inflamed and they give me fever sometimes. I've just been taking panadol every night to reduce the fevers.
Found this on WebMD:
Skin can also go through color changes during chemotherapy, particularly with breast or colon cancer treatment. Sometimes, the hands or face are affected, which can make a patient feel self-conscious.
Jackpot lor only two cancers cause this and mine is one of them. And I always act like it doesn't bother me. I tell myself, and I truly believe, that acne is a small price to pay for chemotherapy especially because the adults are complaining about severe pains and migraines. But I cannot help but feel upset about it. Even though I still behave like a boss wherever I am and I still maintain proper eye contact with whomever I am speaking with, I feel extremely insecure about leaving my room. When I have the willpower to go out in public, I see the way people look at me. When I talk to service staff, I see the way they look at me. They're not looking at me, they're looking at my skin. I couldn't even get a proper haircut without the hairdressers looking at me funny and acting very awkwardly around me until my hairdresser worked up the courage to ask, ni pi fu ming gan ah? (your skin sensitive ah?). At least he was kind. He had to be, right? When I'm in the mall with my friends I see the way passersby look at me like I'm some skin-diseased, walking infection. Either that or I imagine them thinking omg what's wrong with her face, eat too much fried food is it? Why never see doctor? Why never take care of your skin? I had to explain to my nosey hairdresser that it was a side effect from taking medicine. Then he just had to ask what medicine? I told him it was chemotherapy. He remained silent until I had to make payment. To be honest, sometimes I wish I had a sign over my body saying I have cancer stop judging my face. Sounds ridiculous right? What to do. That's how they look at me. And I know how uncomfortable these situations can be especially if you meet with a friend you haven't seen in a long time. So I just break the awkwardness by ranting about how cui my face is. But they don't know how much it physically hurts.
4. Pimples in places I never knew could have pimples
Other than my face, my pau face, pimples started popping up rapidly all over my scalp, within my eyebrows, inside my ears, and in my nostrils. Not my nose, nostrils. As if dry scalp wasn't enough, now it's covered with bumps and tiny open wounds. It hurts to move my hair. Meaning I can't run my fingers through them, can't flip them aside, hurts like crazy to brush it, and I absolutely resent shampooing it. The hair follicles are so messed up and my scalp is very sensitive now. My sister came into my room earlier to ask me to help her pull out a strand of white hair. I felt the pinch and expressed how crazy she must be to pull it out, doesn't it hurt? And then I remembered that she probably doesn't know how much my hair is causing me trouble and pain so of course she wouldn't think twice about pulling them out. I know during chemo I complain on twitter about how much I miss showering. But now, I hate having to shower because it takes too much effort and inflicts too much pain. I cut my hair short because I couldn't deal with it anymore. It is less troublesome, but still very painful. I'm glad I got my hair rebonded before all this because at least it's manageable and it stays in place. I don't have to flip it or swing it or anything. It just stays. Like a helmet. Then I look at old photos and miss my long thick hair. Now it's just short, thin, painful. I would shave it all off if only my scalp wasn't so jia lat. I think the hair is protecting my skin to some extent. Even as I put my palm over my head I can feel the bumps and it hurts. This is probably the suckiest thing to happen. More so than the face because this hurts most.
And even though I'm not going bald, the damn pimples on the skin where my eyebrows are at is causing so many problems that my brows are actually dropping. And during this period the hair follicles are weak so nothing is growing. Hair has stopped growing for me. I decided to do this longass post because while I was washing my face today I think I lost half of my right brow. I showered at 2am because I was distraught at the condition of my face. I have never felt this ugly in my life. Ever look into the mirror and all you want to do is cry because you don't even recognise the face looking back at you? Anyway, my skin is so bad, no one would probably pay attention to my naked brow. Don't even try to recommend shaving it off and tattooing a brow or using a brow pencil or what. This was what the chemo centre recommended, they even showed a video of cancer patients going for makeup lessons together. Well, none of them had acne like I do. I don't even want to touch my brows what more do all that shit to it. But I have to endure the pain in order to clean all the crap.
It was a good thing I wrote this post because it made me do more research on whatever's going on. Apparently the scalp thing has a name. Hello doctor, why you never warn me. It's called Folliculitis. An infection and inflammation of the hair follicles, causing it to become red and irritated, and form pus-filled lesions that resemble pimples. So it's not pimples. It's something so much worse that there's a name with five syllables in it.
My ears are pimply too. What. I didn't know this was even possible. And I'm the girl that cannot go to sleepovers without bringing along q-tips. My ears are like mega clean. So can you imagine how baffled I was to find it pimpling up too? And my nostrils. I think my body is just constantly dehydrated or something, because it is so dry. So so so dry. I can't even clean my nose with a q-tip without tearing up because it hurts that badly. Q-TIPS FO LIFE. Well, on the bright side at least I never ever have to deal with a runny nose. Also, even as I write this post and rest my arms on the table, one bump just appeared on the bottom of my arm. WHAT IS THIS EVEN is my body some kind of game.
ON THE PLUS SIDE, pus is composed of dead cells formed as a by-product of bacteria. So my body is detoxing? And at least I know the chemo is working, killing something. I went for a massage because my body was aching up and again, service staff, questions, chatter chatter, I had to tell her that I have cancer. She was from China and I was hesitant saying cancer in Mandarin because I couldn't remember which word meant cancer and which one meant aids. lololololol. But I was correct in the end. See, my chinese not so bad. And she was really kind too, and she was actually the one who reminded me that having pimples meant that my body was detoxing and it was a good thing. Pimples sound very cute in Mandarin. Dou dou. She kept saying zhe xie xiao dou dou mei shi de, ni bie dan xin. XIAO DOU DOU. YOU MAKE CAI MING MING'S FACE SOUND SO CUTE I LOVE YOU LADY.
5. Bleeding, keep bleeding luv
My nose bleeds a lot. Not often, but when it does, it is A LOT. At first it freaked me out, then it became a daily routine during the first few days after chemo. It sucks because after the bleeding stopped, I had to q-tip clean it which meant painnnnnnnnn. And tonight, after my meltdown over my face and my naked brow and my desert scalp, my gums started to bleed. I was brushing my teeth and my toothbrush turned pink. Do you know how scary it is trying to find the source of bleeding in your mouth? I thought my teeth was going to fall out because I ALWAYS have dreams about having all my teeth fall out. Thank God nothing was remotely loose. I probably should make an appointment with the dentist but what if it hurts and bleeds even more then?
6. Your nails change too. WAT.
I read somewhere that your nail can actually be separated from the bed during chemotherapy. Thank God mine isn't to that extent, but it has shifted a little and it's cutting into my skin. So even walking hurts a little now. And it cut into my skin so much that there's a small open wound today. Just what I need. Another reason for an infection.
7. Ulcers, mother of all ulcers
Before, there was a colony of ulcers on the tip of my tongue and under it so it hurt no matter what I was doing. Now there's just one right smack in the middle of my bottom lip. It's taking forever to heal. I have three different medicines for ulcers and it still isn't healing. But thank God, it's just one compared to the previous colony. It's still bearable.
The scariest part of all this is that I've only gone through 2 out of 6 cycles and all this is already happening. I pray I never become too weak to take care of myself or too weak to endure pain. If you've read through this entire post, congratulations. If you were at any point disgusted by it, well I'm not sorry because I am living through this. I really hope none of you ever have to experience what I'm going through. It's not easy, it's not painless, it's not comfortable at all. I always say that I'm not afraid of anything but I am afraid of pain. Going through it now, all I can say is thank God that it's still bearable. I just really really really need my scalp to not hurt anymore. I would shave my whole head if it meant I could take better care of my scalp but the thought of anything coming close to my hair pinches me already. Ok it's 4am. Goodnight.