Saturday, April 10, 2010

Mr. IV Cart


No more being chained to this sucker on the recliner chair or dragging it into the bathroom with me. The brown bag one is the EVIL one. The light sensitive Dacarbazine that take 3 hours for infusion and burns like hell. Grrrrrr....

Day 148 3/8/10 Monday

Doesn’t quite feel like week 2 yet. I still feel like week 1 of chemo, with the achiness, weak stomach and listlessness. This is probably why I’m not quite celebrating the end of chemo yet. I’m still being slapped around by its effects.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Day 147 3/7/10 Sunday

I’m losing my marbles. Tonight I left a candle burning in the bathroom and the thing dissolved and melted all over the toilet cover, bathroom floor and my bath rug. The bf was sweet enough to clean up the mess while I stood there and stared in disbelief, but not until he took a picture of it.

Day 146 3/6/10 Saturday

I’ve officially lost enough brain cells to be dangerous. Last night, I turned on the oven to bake some sweet potato fries, found the sweet potatoes to be moldy and threw them out, then promptly forgot about the oven until half an hour later when the bf asked why the oven was on. I have never ever EVER done that before.

Day 145 3/5/10 Friday

Slowly getting better again. Coffee milkshake time!

Today in counseling, A mentioned that chemo induces depression in a lot of people. Oooooohhhhh… well that totally explains the extra amount of bursting into tears at the drop of a hat. I think that also provided much needed explanation and an extra dose of patience to the bf over my extreme mood swings, aside from the obvious reasons of feeling crappy 75% of the time.

Oooh on Grey’s Anatomy last night, one of the patients survived leukemia AND lymphoma, only to have pulmonary fibrosis (scarring of the lung tissue) as a side effect from the radiation. Of course, he ended up surviving this crazy lung transplant thing.

The bf turned to me and asked, “could that happen to you?” And I replied “Well, I’m having my heart and lungs tested next week for damage from chemo! But I’m sure everything is fine.” Hmmm, he wasn’t reassured by that. I am simply refusing to believe that there will be much if any damage!

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Day 144 3/4/10 Thursday

Seriously, today is the first day I’ve even managed to put on a bra and not wear the same sweatpants and shirt from the past three days. The support group provides me a reason to leave the house since the bf seems perfectly comfortable working from home and not leaving for days.

It was a small group today, but always worthwhile and helpful. I even got some tea with one of the ladies and gave her a lift back to Santa Monica. During our car ride, she told me her story – how her boyfriend of 17 years left her when she got breast cancer, how he turned their son against her, cheated her out of all the money they ever earned together in their landscaping business, lost her home and got her possessions stolen by her landlord during treatment…

There are just no words to say to a story like that. I can not relate or grasp the magnitude of such loss. And yet, we still bonded over our mutual frustration at weight gain and loss of independence in being able to physically do the things we once did. I echoed the same sentiment I’ve been told many times. “It’ll take time but we’ll slowly lose the weight and get back in shape. We’ll get back to the things we used to do.” But we both chuckled once the words lazily rolled off my tongue. “At least that’s what they say,” I added.

Day 143 3/3/10 Wednesday

Yesterday and today, I’ve felt like I have half a brain. I feel like I’m moving slowly as if underwater. Most of the time, my appetite and nausea have been ok, but the nausea will suddenly slap me in the face out of the blue. Usually because I forgot to take my anti-nausea medicine in a timely manner.

Since I haven’t left the house since Monday, I’ve neglected to brush my hair. Why bother? It just falls out anyway. Until I looked in the mirror and realized I looked like a crazy person, like the Professor in Back to the Future but with much less hair. I turned to the bf and asked, “why have you let me walk around like a crazy person all morning?!” And he just smiled humorously and said “you do kinda look like a frazzled housewife who just had a baby.” Hooray. Just the look I was going for.