I’m not sure how to describe the latest round of chemo side effects, but I’ll try. I feel as if my nerve endings are raw and are jumping all over my body. The excruciating twinges last a mere second, but they are very uncomfortable; no, dammit, they hurt! The whole time I’m awake, I never know where they will hit next. It could be my hips, my head, my abdomen, and they keep moving. If you’ve ever been pregnant and felt a baby kicking your belly from the inside, that’s what this feels like but magnified a thousand times. If you haven’t been pregnant, then imagine the worst case of food poisoning or GI upset you’ve had, and imagine that pain all over your body but constantly moving from one place to the next. Sometimes, it hits muscles so I have to stop whatever I’m doing because the muscles don’t work for that millisecond.
The nausea is back, too. It doesn’t seem to matter what I eat or drink. It’s slight, but ever-present, and fortunately controlled with drugs. I try to use other remedies, such as ginger, instead of the drugs, but sometimes the nausea is so bad I have to take the heavy-duty drug.
The good side is that I should only have two more rounds of chemo; on this round there’s one done and two to go. Then a week off, and another round of three weekly treatments. Then another CT scan and more blood work to check tumor markers. If all goes well, I’ll be on maintenance chemo after that. This will involve a lower does of one of the original drugs, and only once every three weeks. Target date for the end of the destructive chemo is Feb 4th, which is my birthday! What a great birthday present that will be!!
I’m still losing my hair – there are bald patches on my head now, small, but still bald patches. The worst part of losing hair is my hair is so fine it gets up my nose, and in my eyes, and drives me crazy! I have to shake out my pillow every time I get up to get rid of the hair. I asked Jenna to come over today after she’s done with work to shave my head – I’m tired of waiting for it all to fall out. The good part about losing my hair is I had two thick wiry eyebrow hairs, one black, one white, that I had to keep plucking; I haven’t seen either of them in a long time, so maybe they’re not coming back! I’ve heard that the color and texture of hair can be different when it starts growing back after chemo, so that should be interesting.
If nothing else, this journey is teaching me patience, fortitude, and to laugh and not take myself too seriously. 🙂