Cycle Six: WAFSS
- timandcloe
- Jul 20
- 6 min read
There is only one way to accurately describe my sixth and final TCHP cycle.
WAFSS.
What. A. Fucking. Shit. Show.
I knew the side effects were cumulative. Every cycle they tell you, “It’ll build.”
Fair enough.
What they don’t tell you is that by Cycle Six, every single part of your body simultaneously decides, “Stuff this, I’m out.”
It honestly felt like my body held a staff meeting before this round.
“Right everyone… we’ve been pretty restrained for the first five. This one’s the grand finale. Let’s all have a crack.”
And crack they did.
Even I admitted defeat and took a second week of leave. Not a complete disappearance. I still worked where I could, but I needed the space to deal with the fact that my body had become a full-time project requiring constant troubleshooting.
Every few hours brought a new issue demanding immediate attention, and I really didn’t need the added pressure of trying to be a functioning employee while simultaneously clocking up what felt like a second career from the toilet seat.
Everything malfunctioned.
My tongue became an absolute arsehole. It refused to tolerate anything with flavour, texture or temperature. Then, just to really drive the point home, it covered itself in ulcers. Eating became less of a meal and more of an endurance sport.
I’ve now lost over 10kg since chemo started.
Not exactly the weight loss programme I’d recommend.
My fingernails turned yellow, bruised if I looked at them the wrong way, and became so ridiculously tender that opening a packet of chips felt like I was attempting keyhole surgery.
My face and scalp erupted in pustules like I was fourteen again.
Turns out it’s entirely possible to have teenage acne while simultaneously looking ninety-five.
My eyes watered constantly. My nose ran like a faulty tap nobody had bothered to fix, occasionally throwing in a surprise nosebleed just to keep things interesting.
My eyebrows and eyelashes have become less “features” and more “vague memories”. At this point they’re hanging on out of sheer politeness.
Then there were my guts.
Good grief.
Nothing prepares you for being ripped from a deep sleep at 2am by cramps so violent you briefly question whether you need a doctor, an exorcist, or both.
Then comes the mad dash to the toilet, fuelled entirely by adrenaline and blind hope, while quietly wondering whether adult nappies might actually be the more practical life choice.
Because dignity?
She left the building weeks ago.
Along with my ability to pretend any of this was remotely glamorous.
But the fatigue…
That has been in a league entirely of its own.
I’d heard people describe chemo fatigue as “wading through treacle”.
They weren’t wrong.
Except nobody tells you the treacle is knee-deep, you’re wearing concrete boots, every limb weighs twice what it should, and your body is running on the equivalent of a phone battery that’s been stuck on 1% for three days.
Everything becomes an effort.
Standing up feels like exercise.
Walking to the kitchen deserves a rest afterwards.
Folding laundry feels worthy of a medal.
My body was basically running Windows 95 while I was trying to open 47 tabs at once.
And the brain fog…
Let’s just say it’s still very much alive.
Only earlier today I somehow managed to sit down on the toilet without actually taking my underwear off first. And then opened my bladder.
Look, I’m not proud of it.
But I’m also choosing to blame chemotherapy rather than accepting this as a reflection of my own intelligence.
… 👀
It’s only now, more than two weeks later, that I finally feel like I’m beginning to resemble a semi-functioning human again.
The fatigue is manageable.
Food is becoming edible.
I’m no longer planning my day around whichever body part has decided to mutiny.
Though as brutal as this cycle was physically, mentally it also took me somewhere I hadn’t really been before.
There were fleeting moments where I genuinely wondered how much more my body could take.
Whether I could take much more.
Because the hardest part wasn’t even how sick I felt.
It was knowing this wasn’t the finish line.
It was only the end of Round One.
It also didn’t help that I was waiting for my post-neoadjuvant PET scan results.
For more than a week I lived in the world’s most stressful game of Please Let This Have Worked.
After everything my body had been through, I desperately wanted proof that chemo had been quietly murdering cancer cells… and not just my digestive system.
Had it worked?
Was the cancer responding?
Had the four months of this absolute circus actually been worth it?
But anyone who knows me knows I don’t stay in that headspace for very long.
Finding the humour has become something of a survival strategy.
So instead of spiralling before my surgeon’s appointment this afternoon, I spent the morning enthusiastically inviting people to feel the enormous rock-hard cyst that’s developed in my left breast during treatment.
Consent was, of course, important.
“Just check with your partner first…”
It generated a delightful combination of awkward laughs, confused looks and several “what the hell?” responses.
Which, frankly, felt like a much healthier use of my energy.
And earned me a few compliments amongst the ladies too... 😉
Anyway…
Back to the surgeon.
The PET scan results were in.
The first scan, taken at diagnosis, looked exactly how you’d expect Stage 3 breast cancer to look.
Multiple tumours.
Cancer throughout my lymph nodes.
Bright red hotspots lighting up like someone had thrown glitter over all the places cancer had decided to set up camp.
Then she opened the second scan’s report.
Silence.
She looked at me, smiled from ear to ear and said…
“Complete metabolic response.”
Which, translated into normal human language, basically means…
You. Fucking. Beauty.
A complete metabolic response means the PET scan can no longer detect any metabolically active cancer.
In other words, the chemotherapy has done exactly what we hoped it would do.
Now, before anyone gets too excited (including me), it doesn’t guarantee every last cancer cell has disappeared. We won’t know that until my surgery, when everything is sent off to pathology and examined under a microscope.
But this is one of the best possible responses we could have hoped for.
Donald.
Vladimir.
The Benjamins.
You’ve all gone suspiciously quiet.
Tim cried.
I cried.
My surgeon just sat there grinning.
And for the first time in months…
I could breathe.
After hearing those words, I felt ready again.
Ready for surgery.
Ready for radiation.
Ready for whatever comes next.
Don’t get me wrong - I still reserve the right to complain loudly and dramatically throughout all of it - but mentally, I was back.
Turns out hope is one hell of a performance-enhancing drug.
So what’s next?
Surgery is booked for early August.
The right boob is coming off.
The affected lymph nodes are coming out.
A temporary tissue expander will go in while I heal.
Then, about four weeks later, radiation joins the party every weekday for four to six weeks, alongside restarting my targeted therapy infusions every three weeks and beginning hormone suppression therapy.
Once radiation is behind me, there’ll be another operation to remove the expander, remove the left breast and complete my reconstruction.
It’s still a long road.
And if pathology finds any remaining cancer cells, which is still entirely possible, I may also need to start a milder chemotherapy drug called Kadcyla.
But today…
Today feels different.
Today feels hopeful.
And then there’s Barry Jones.
Barry Jones isn’t actually Barry Jones.
Barry Jones is the anonymous alter ego Tim’s high school mates have used for years to send each other increasingly ridiculous things through the post.
We’re talking Scientology registrations.
Semen cookbooks.
Impotence brochures.
Absolute nonsense.
Following the last cycle, Barry has somehow escalated his game.
Every few days another tiny rubber duck has mysteriously appeared with a little note telling cancer exactly where it can shove itself.
Some ducks have been wholesome.
Some have been… less wholesome.
A surprising number appear to have very adventurous personal lives.
You absolute weirdos.
I genuinely couldn’t love it more.
So that’s where I am.
Two weeks after my final TCHP.
Two weeks before surgery.
A body that’s slowly remembering how to function.
A mind that’s finally carrying a little more hope than fear.
There is still plenty to come.
But for the first time since this whole blip started…
It genuinely feels like we’re heading in the right direction.
So thank you.
For every message.
Every meal.
Every lift.
Every laugh.
Every rubber duck.
Every person who’s helped carry me through the absolute WAFSS that has been the last four months.
We’ve still got work to do.
But today…
Today we celebrate.
And as always…
Fuck cancer. 🦆
Some photos/scans from this cycle:
This blog is to allow me to write a little more about it along the way. Partly to keep friends and family updated, and partly because writing has always been how I make sense of things.
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