Chemo round 3, Day 12.
You never appreciate the utility of nose hair until it’s gone.
Chemo 1 at this time the infection in my port was just starting up. Chemo 2, I was in the middle of a three-night hospital stay with neutropenic fever. Chemo 3, my naked nostrils and I are at the cabin, enjoying the open water on the lake with no fever in sight. Thank you, Neulasta Onpro!
Years ago, I met up with a friend who was living in Bangkok. Over dinner, she talked about her pervasive malaise, mostly centered around ongoing gastric distress. “If I was home in the U.S., I’d think I was dying. Living in Thailand, this is completely normal.”
That’s what it’s like living in Chemo. How am I? Fine! I’m doing great! At this point in the cycle, I’m not taking any of my “chemo meds,” to include steroids, anti-nausea meds, Miralax, stool softeners, antacids, narcotic painkillers. I’ll take an occasional sleeping pill, I’m still fighting thrush, but that’s pretty much it. However, I’m weak and a bit wobbly. I get tired very (shockingly) easily. I’m lightheaded every time I stand up. I think this bout of oral thrush is almost over, yet my mouth feels coated in cotton and my throat still hurts. My fingernails have weird ridges, and every time I blow my nose (which is often, as lack of nose hair somehow makes your nose run), the tissue is covered with a very fine spray of bright red blood.
If I wasn’t living in Chemo, I’d think I was dying.
But since this is where I am, I’m awesome! Based on my highly scientific self-test of how easily I can do word games on my phone, my cognition is good. I’m able to sit and work on my computer for hours, no problem.
And there’s no better place for that than at the cabin. It’s glorious here. Snow is gone, ice is out of the lake. I walked out with the dog last night to a round robin of loon calls. I’ve never heard so many at once. It was amazing. Today is cloudy and windy, but still nice. It is a good day for a fire in the wood stove, but I don’t know what I feel like doing about it. And by that I don’t know if I should start whining at Bob to make a fire now, or wait until later. Maybe I’ll start now.