Slacker blogger

Yes, it's true, I don't update the blog often enough. From my perspective, I feel like nothing's changed, so why update it, while my friends who aren't in regular contact with me want to know what's going on.

Oh well.

I've had 6 of the planned 8 chemo sessions, and continue to tolerate chemo well. But there are still those days when I'm so tired I simply nap off and on all day -- sometimes it's within a few days after chemo, some days it just seems to come out of the blue. Ditto for the bane of chemo, constipation, about which no more will be said.

Other than those days where the fatigue hits hard, in general I'd say the fatigue hasn't been progressive. It seemed to reach a plateau (valley?) early on, and hasn't changed.

Somewhere along the way, and I'm not exactly sure when, my attitude about chemo changed; I ceased to think of it as poisons being dumped into my body and started to think of it as healing elixirs, gently checking out everything inside of me and fixing anything that wasn't just right. It doesn't change the fact that the process of chemo is boring, but it made me feel better about it.

In the last post I said that it looked like I wasn't going to lose my hair, and I still haven't. Feels weird to not be part of the Bald Chemo Patient Club.

I've learned that my veins are very tiny. I suppose it's always been true, but in the usual course of events one doesn't have to bare one's veins for a needle, so I guess it just never stuck in my brain in the years between having to have blood drawn for some reason. Now that it's a regular thing, I'm keenly aware of how the nurses struggle with finding a vein. Last time it took two nurses and half an hour to find one. Now isn't that special?

Weight loss continues to be a problem. More accurately, lack of weight gain is a problem. The doctor put me on some meds that are supposed to increase my appetite and I feel like I'm eating more, but it's not changing the scales. My friends are fantastic in bringing meals to me. Last weekend Sherri's daughter Amanda came over for about 5 hours and cooked up dozens of single-serving meals and froze them. I faded out before she was finished and had to go take a nap, and woke up a couple of hours later with a filled freezer, a clean kitchen, and no sign of Amanda. What a blessing my friends (and their daughters!) are.

The only cloud in this sunny report is that cancer markers are still showing up in my blood tests. To give you a point of reference, my marker count before treatment was 27, and the last test was 7. I thought that was pretty good, but the doctor wasn't pleased. The half-life of the markers are known, and thus should decline at a specific rate, and by this time should be at zero. So back to the radiologists for another CT scan to see if they can find traces of any other cancer. My attitude? I'm not particularly worried. NOTHING about my cancer journey has been quite the expected path, from tolerating chemo well to not losing my hair to having a perfect record of wonderful medical professionals, so I just assume that their calculations on the rate of reduction of cancer markers failed to account for the Marcee Factor.

Of course, radiation is still ahead of me. I figure that will begin in early July and will be 5 days a week for 5-6 weeks. Side-effects of radiation include nausea, fatigue, and because they'll be targeting the esophagus, difficulty swallowing. I'm trying to keep my positive attitude reigned in just short of cocky -- I don't want the Cancer Treatment Gods to think I need to be slapped down a peg or two.

May and It's Spring!

There have been a series of reasons why I haven't written in a while. At first it was because there wasn't anything special going on; then my Big Sister Joyce came to visit for 4 days; then for the last few days I've been sick. Being in cancer treatment has about a gazillion negative things about it, one of them being that if you don't feel well there's never an easy reason. Is it in reaction to the chemo? Did I pick up a bug? Was it something I ate? In the end it really doesn't matter -- I felt terrible and couldn't eat anything and could only be vertical for about 4 minutes at a time, then I had to be back in bed. That started on Friday and this afternoon I'm not feeling a whole lot of improvement, but I seem to be able to be upright for up to half an hour. I couldn't even sit outside for our fabulous weather we've been having,even today when it's 85. Other than my fleeting moments of verticality, I'm only comfortable lying in a fetal position.

The days with Joyce were wonderful. She brought two full photo albums of ancestors, our shared childhood and into young adulthood.  We had hours of conversation and stories beginning with, "Do you remember when . . . ?"

I'm now at 5 weeks since beginning chemo, and still have not lost my hair. A week ago the doctor told me that 1 out of 10 never lose their hair. I never knew that. I thought hair loss was inevitable. And dang it all, I was all ready to be decked out in CUTE hats. And did you know there are hundreds of different ways to tie head scarves? Just go to YouTube and search for "tying chemo scarves" and you'll see what kinds of things I've been patiently practicing for weeks. Shoot. I could have used all that time making smaller clothes.

Yes, I'm still losing weight, and these last few days of whatever was going on with me made it even worse. When I first was diagnosed with cancer, everyone told me not to be shy about asking for what I need, and I assured everyone that I was perfectly comfortable asking for help and they needn't worry, if I needed something, I'd ask.

Another piece of self-image shattered. Darn it anyway, don't you hate when that happens? It turns out I'm not so good at asking. I'm fine with a specific thing, like a ride to and from one kind of medical procedure or another. Or invite myself along when someone says she's going to Costco. But as my stamina shrinks and my fatigue grows, day-to-day living is becoming more problematic. Changing the sheets on the bed. Cooking. Ah, cooking is especially a problem because I'm not very hungry, so it's hard to work up the umph to cook. Besides which, right now grocery shopping seems overwhelming.

I know as I write this that I have to take into account that something unusual has been going on the last few days, and I'm just plain sick. While emotionally it feels like it's the beginning of a long slide down, my head tells me that I'll snap out of this soon and feel at least a little better.

I sure hope so, or I'll have to make some radical improvement in my ability to articulate exactly what I need and when I need it.