So, yesterday was not easy. For those of you playing along at home, my chemo treatments for the past three months have looked something like this - treatment day 1: 2.5 hours of chemical infusions followed by aches and bed rest, but not much sleep due to steroids; treatment day 2: slightly better than day 1, but still receiving 5-FU via portable pump that goes whirrrr-click every couple of minutes and sleep is still evasive; day 3: pump is removed but I receive an injection to stimulate white cell production (which adds to fatigue for the subsequent two days). But by day 5 things are feeling almost normalish.
Yesterday, day 3 of this last cycle, I was "awakened" by my pump beeping like crazy. I was barely asleep anyways, so that was not a big deal, but the pump indicated that there was an "upstream occlusion" and would not be whirrrr-clicking anytime soon. So I managed to silence the incessant beeps, and called the clinic. They said to bring myself in and they would manually pump the remaining chemo (9 mg in solution) into me and disconnect the pump. That is about half of the infusion that I receive at the very end of every day 1 prior to hooking up the pump, and it really knocked me back. To say that this led to a sub-normal day 3 is an understatement... and I did not even have the injection to stimulate my white cell production!
Exercise class ended with me sitting in a chair with my head down, trying to stay conscious. After ten minutes, I regained enough color that my instructor allowed mr to leave. I had a scrambled egg, slept for an hour, then went to a reiki appointment... which usually energizes me. Unfortunately, not this time. It was a busy day, and perhaps I should have slowed down. But with the sad announcement of Steve Jobs' death, I really wanted to seize my day. And every day.
This morning feels pretty good, relatively speaking. I may even try to catch up on some of my workload - which unfortunately does not seem to realize that I am not there! Best part of the morning so far is that I am hungry.
Namasté.
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2 comments:
Ed, our thoughts are with you. As far as work goes, you are missed and are overdue on project "Java Break" time TBD at the IKE box! Namasté. PN
God bless you, Ed. What an ordeal! My own body aches just reading about it. But it's over, over, over!! You deserve many many long bike rides in the future.
Dorothy S
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