(Original title – The Worst Birthday)

The one thing I did when I found out that I would be having session number seven of Chemo was check when session number eight might be, and book flights to Adelaide for the weekend afterwards. Come hell or high water, I was going to get the fuck out of Melbourne for a few days and pretend like I wasn’t sick for a while.

I had a pretty stressful pre-flight episode when I left Melbourne. I’d been waiting for my new treatment drug to arrive (Ibrance / Palbociclib at $5,000 for 21 days) at my chemist near home. The original plan for my day looked like this:

6am – wake up

8am – finish packing bags

8:30am – call chemist to see if my drugs were in for pickup on the way to Peter Mac

9:30am – drive to Peter Mac

10:30am – 12pm – sleep psychology group session at Peter Mac

12:05 – drive home

12:30pm – order Uber, get to airport to check in luggage and eat something healthy-ish for lunch

2pm – board flight

3:30pm – land in Adelaide

4pm – buy my favourite Japanese chocolate at Marion on way home

5pm – make parents wait on me hand and foot for the next week

 

My day ended up looking like this:

6am – wake up

8am – finish packing bags

8:30am – call chemist to see if drugs have arrived, get told they’re not and to call other pharmacy just in case

9am – drive to other chemist near Highpoint to check if drugs received there by mistake

9:30am – drive to Peter Mac

10:30am – sleep psychology group session at Peter Mac

11:40am – receive phone call from chemist to say drugs have been found, but there’s no prescription to dispense it

12pm – sleep psychology group session ends

12:05pm – hassle breast nurse to interrupt my oncologist in clinic to get said prescription

12:10pm – nurse calls to tell me oncologist will give me prescription after she’s finished with the patient she’s with

12:25pm – oncologist finishes with patient and calls me in for details to complete prescription

12:30pm – run to car park

12:32pm – text pharmacist to tell him I’ll pick it up on my way to the airport

12:35 – drive home

1:10pm – order Uber

1:20pm – get in Uber

1:27pm – pick up drugs from chemist

1:55pm – arrive at airport, check in luggage

2:05pm – get a cheeseburger at McDonald’s and eat as quickly as possible before making way to gate

2:19pm – board flight

3:30pm – land in Adelaide

4pm – buy my favourite Japanese chocolate at Marion on way home

5pm – make parents wait on me hand and foot for the next week

Yeah, I’ve had better starts to holidays. I’ve also had worse.

I’m not sure if it was the lady sitting in the aisle seat across from my window one who did not stop hack-coughing the entire time on the flight over, but the day after I arrived, my headache of two days turned into a full-blown migraine that drugs (even my prescription migraine melty thing) didn’t touch, and brought along a lovely sore throat friend with it. Yeah. I was thrilled, as I’m sure you can tell. I was due to see a GP anyway for my monthly “shut the baby-making system down” injection, so I got him to check out my throat as well while I was there because it was really beginning to bug me.

Turns out the sore throat brought its shitty housemate pus along with it. I didn’t invite the sore throat, and I sure as shit didn’t invite its free-loading bastard friend along on this holiday, but here they are now. The solution?

Penicillin. 50 tablets. Four times a day. That’s 4 tablets a day for 12.5 days.

All you ladies out there can guess how thrilled I am to be prescribed antibiotics for this long – and I can’t use Canesten anti-fungal creams because they interact with Ibrance.

On the upside, I had a pretty good time. I got to see people I haven’t seen in ages, and make cake to show them I’m still a human capable of doing nice things for people even though they should be baking me cake because I have cancer (hahahahahahahaa). It’s okay, I won’t hold it against you for long – only the rest of my life.

*boom tish*

I went to some markets that are held every year with my parents who go to these markets every year because they’re old and that’s what old people do, then we went to Monarto Open Range Zoo to see giraffes and meerkats and cheetahs, oh my! I baked cupcakes, I baked bread with my dad (twice, Boston Buns – if you don’t know what these are, then you’re dead to me), had lunch with my grandmother, dinner with Tom and his mum, had a meeting with my lawyer, and my financial planner, and caught up with co-workers past and current for coffee.

It was really, really nice to get out of Melbourne for a few days. Just the break of sitting on a different couch and watching a different TV for a few days was really relaxing. Foxtel is a huge waste of money though. It’s not something I would opt to have, but my parents enjoy it. At least there’s no constant repeats with Netflix.

It’s back to reality once I land from being 24,000 feet above South Australia and Victoria. My headache has come back with a vengeance, it’s like my head doesn’t like being in Adelaide and honestly, who can blame it?

Capping off this update is a list of alternative names for Adelaide:

• bAdelaide
• sAdelaide
• dAdelaide
• dreAdelaide (my new favourite)
• rAdelaide
• that shithole
• mAdelaide