MTCJ — 25 May 2022
This time, the hit came a day earlier than during the first cycle. Since yesterday afternoon, I feel nauseous and extremely tired. It also came quite suddenly, from feeling quite alright, to rather unwell, within an hour or so. Well, everyone always said chemo is cumulative, so each cycle is likely to hit you a little harder than the previous one. So far that seems to be coming true, at least from a timing perspective.
Little things like discovering I have electric blinds in front of my window, make a difference. The first night, the sun came in at 5am, waking me up — booh — the second night, I was able to sleep a little later because the blinds kept out most of the sun — yay! The third night, the blinds refused to cooperate (annoyed) so the sun woke me up again early (tired).
Despite the tiredness, I got out of bed this morning, weighed myself (need to check daily, to make sure I’m not retaining too much water, with all the fluids being pumped into me on a daily basis) and went for me morning walk in the hospital gardens. The gardens are quite beautiful, lots of little flowers and nice bushes, and it feels good to be in the fresh air and move my legs a bit. I’m trying to do 3k (2 miles) each morning and have my shower, before breakfast comes at 7:30, and I’m hooked up to the drip for the next 12–13 hours.
Everything is becoming a bit more routine now. The first time around, everything was new, I was quite nervous. This time around, I know what’s coming (more or less). Sometimes I tell the nurses the flow rate of the drip, depending on what I’m getting at the time. I know I’ll be feeling like this until I go home, and then a few more days at home, until I start feeling more like myself again. It helps to have this perspective. I know I’ll be feeling unwell and tired for the next few days, so I can prepare for it and cope with it. And I know I will eventually be feeling better again, which helps — the famous light at the end of the tunnel.
I’m not very good at doing nothing, and yet, that’s the best I can do right now, and, to be honest, the only thing, since I’m so tired. Mentally it’s challenging for me. Normally, when I get to the end of a day and I feel I haven’t done anything, haven’t achieved anything or at least made good use of the time, I am unhappy and in a bad mood. Now I must focus on using my energy to allow my body to fight this cancer and repair the additional damage chemo is doing to my body. It’s hard work, which is why I feel so tired. But this understanding hasn’t fully entered my “daily judgment centre”, the place in my brain that judges if a day was well used or not (“carpe diem”, after all), and accordingly decides if I’m content or happy with myself, or rather dissatisfied. Work to be done there for me…
Today my wife came to visit, brought me the food and drink stuff I miss, plus a huge electric cooler she bought for me, so my drinks aren’t always room temperature. I’m so fed up of room temperature water, it literally makes me nauseous just thinking of it. So a cooler and some drinks (flavoured water, isotonic drink) are heavenly! Also it was so good to see her and hug her — my absolute highlight of the day. Tomorrow it’s my sons’ turn to come and visit, I’m already looking forward to seeing them.
Time to switch off for the day. I still have about an hour to go before the daily routine of IV meds is done. But I’m too tired to concentrate on writing more (I hope what I’ve put together kind of makes sense — I re-read it and to me it does, but I don’t fully trust my brain at the moment), but I wanted to send a brief update. As always, thanks for reading!
