I have entered the 2012 Ride to Conquer Cancer. A distance of 200KM over two days on 18/19 August 2012. Not too hard but enough to give me a new training Goal. The deal is that I need to raise $2,500 to do the ride. 
Last weekend Michael and I rode in the 100Km Brisbane to Gold Coast bicycle challenge. It was a sunny day so I got absolutely roasted by the sun when the course turned due East along the Hope Island road. My legs were cramping by the end and Michael was certainly getting away from me on the hills. Looks like I still have a long way to go to get my pre-chemo fitness back again. Anyway, Michael was kind enough to wait for the "old fella" and we crossed the finish together four hours after starting. A great day!
BEFORE CHEMO:That is me on the right at 70kgs in late 2009.
AFTER CHEMO: weighing 80kgs in March 2011 - 10kgs overweight with a fat gut! I have some work ahead of me to get rid of that 'food baby'...
Nausea - the literature talks a lot about nausea so I was expecting this one. Of course, they always tell you that you will be taking anti-nausea medication to manage it and that is true. My experience was that the only thing that worked was Zofran. And here is a tip my Oncologist Dr Paul Mainwaring told me: Take the Zofran half an hour before you take the Temodal. It seems obvious in hindsight, but at first I did not know what I was doing, so I just lined up all my tablets and took them all at once! - Not good!!!
The other thing I discovered about the nausea was that, for me at least, I found that the nausea was always at its worst when I had an empty stomach. As a consequence I started snacking a lot of the time to keep the nausea at bay.
Tiredness - The literature talks about this side effect as well. But I was not prepared for the absolutely overwhelming tiredness that I experienced. I have been pretty active in the past but I found that it took an enoumous amount of mental discipline to get myself out there doing things during chemotherapy. Fortunately, my mates rallied around and made sure that I was still doing the odd bush walk and bike ride with them.
Weight Gain - Now this is something that I certainly was not expecting! The effects of the snacking associated with the nausea being worse on an empty stomach plus the tiredness (both described above) resulted in consuming way too much food for what I was burning off in exercise. The photos before and after Chemo show the result: a 10 kg weight gain in 12 months.
No blood problems - Strangely enough, the side effect most commonly described in the literature did not occur once for me in the 12 cycles I undertook. Every month I had a blood test and every month Dr Mainwaring would tell me that the 'bloods' (i.e. the results) were great! By the end I was hoping that there would be bad result so I could have some time off. Alas, that was not to be...
After a visit to my Oncologist yesterday where my blood tests showed everything to be normal, I have been given the go ahead to start my twelveth (and FINAL) dose of Temodal (temozolomide) next week. As you can see from the size of my gut in the photo, I have gained a lot of weight in the past year from being so sluggish. That was one of the side-effects I was not expecting, so I will do another post at the very end to talk about the side-effects they don't tell you about. It might be useful for those readers considering starting a course of treatment with Temodal. 
