I have a week of taking them, then a week off them, and fuck me they make me feel GREAT! I’m on a really high dose – 120mg (26 pills) and they turn me into a Duracell bunny, bouncing off the walls, bounding through life, feeling positive about everything, like nothing can touch me, like cancer has nothing on me, like I’m not even ill. ‘Hey guys, look at me, not ill at all, cancer? What’s that? Do I look like I have cancer to you? Would someone with cancer be acting like this?” I go on a manic cleaning spree, I stay up until 1am with friends at a bar, I go on long country walks, I bake cakes, I cook, I go for dinner and plough down a large steak, I go shopping, I bash out a blog and get it published – all in a week. The steroids give me a false sense of wellness, they coat me in a protective bubble. I walk around in a dream-like state. There is a disconnect between my physical and mental self. I do not feel ill; I definitely do not feel like I have cancer, although I’m not quite sure how that’s supposed to ‘feel’. I can’t quite get my head around the fact that inside my body a million tiny cells have changed so much and so rapidly that I now have stage four cancer, I have a tumour in my chest, and my blood counts are so all over the place that I also now have anaemia, because mentally I feel well and actually physically, I feel pretty good too.

And then the dip comes. My consultant warned me of it, and boy does it hit. The first day of not taking them and I’m in the car on my way to pick up some friends. Out of nowhere, mid sentence my head literally drops to my chin, my speech slurs, I cannot talk, a pounding headache suddenly rages over my right eye. For the next few days everything feels like it has slowed down; there’s a soft blurring of the edges of my world, like my eyes have gone into slo-mo mode. I am coming down, I am coming down hard. I’m an anxiety-riddled, emotional wreck and I am suddenly very, very aware that I have cancer. The confidence I had for my new shaved head has gone, I hate my new wig, I don’t want to wear a head scarf. I cry a lot, for about two days. It’s the instability of everything at the moment that’s tough to deal with, the peaks and troughs, the ups and downs. Mainly though it’s the complete and utter lack of control over both my mind and body. I have gone from being a 28-year-old, independent, fun-loving, career-driven female making her own choices and steering her own destiny, to someone whose everyday life is dictated by disease and chemicals.

The steroids also have some really sexy side effects. Firstly, they’ve given me acne – great! I didn’t get acne when I was a teenager but now that I’m nearly 30, I have broken out in an acne-like rash which has decided to rest its little blackhead creatures all over my face. Up next: extreme eating. My appetite has gone into complete overdrive. I want to eat everything in sight, mainly things containing lots of sugar. My mind has no stop-eating switch, so I can and do just eat and eat and eat. I am having two breakfasts a day, lunch, dinner, dessert and normally a late night snack consisting of something really healthy and light, like a bowl of ice cream or some crumpets with lashings of butter. And then to complement the extreme eating, steroids make your body store fat in funny places, mainly your stomach and face. So yes, my flat, toned stomach that I’ve basically worked out on since I can remember – gone. Replaced with a permanent rounded little belly that has a nice orange peel texture, mmm yeah. My slim face, with good bone structure, that’s gone too. I now have what is known as ‘moon face’. So with my shaved head, acne-riddled, rounded, puppy fat face and boobs that have shrunken to nothing from losing so much weight, I now look like a 16-year-old boy. Cheers, cheers for that life, cheers.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow My consultant told me that my hair would start to fall out a few days before the start of my second cycle of chemo and of course he was spot on. As if by some strange magic I woke up on Monday morning, had a shower and lots of my hair started to fall out. I got out the shower, brushed it through and even more came out. I tugged at the ends and could start to pull out small handfuls. My mum suggested I have it cut into a short bob but I just wasn’t ready to let go of it yet. I’d told myself over and over again, from the very start of my journey, that I wasn’t bothered about losing my hair, that I’d much rather have no hair and no cancer but of course when it started to happen I suddenly felt very attached to it.