Sour and Sweet

I just glanced at a calendar and realized that my next round of chemo starts two weeks from tomorrow - that's not possible, I just recovered from my last round of chemo. Talk about putting a knot in the pit of your stomach. Then came the realization: this will be my LAST ROUND OF CHEMO!!!! Bring it on! I am tough enough to handle anything for one round. I think that my last day of chemo will be accompanied by the same wardrobe from the first day: time to break the turd shirt out again. I really struggle with appropriately expressing the euphoria: this miserable chapter of my life is almost finished. I will send this chapter out with a bang, details are being worked out and will follow. A designated driver might be in order.
Oh, by the way, cancer can kiss my a**

And then there was one

Round five is officially behind me now, with only one more round remaining. This round wasn't nearly as tough as I expected, it wasn't as bad as the last two rounds. Tuesday was brutal, but Wednesday and Thursday were a relative walk in the park (okay, actually a lie in the bed). I just slept through Wednesday and Thursday and today hasn't been to bad. The headaches started to flare up when I was driving down to Brown Cancer Center, without headache medicine of course; but I was able to relax while I waited and keep the headache at bay until I got home to my medications. I will be sooooo glad to have this behind me.

Anniversary

Today is another significant anniversary in my life: five years ago today I went from a three pack a day cigarette habit to not smoking again. Cold turkey. Never smoked even one after I made up my mind to quit.

Round 5, day 2+

Dr. Chesney changed my medications around differently than I expected. He suspects that my headaches may have been due to low blood pressure, rather than directly to Kytril. so I am able to keep taking the Kytril and just drop taking my blood pressure medications while I am taking chemo. He also gave me a prescription for two headache medications.
Tuesday evening was the worst day that I have experienced during chemotherapy. I spent about three hours in the bathroom, just rotating ends. Rita ran over and picked me up some Immodium on the way over and that helped a lot. The nausea eventually passed on and I was able to sleep Tuesday night.Yesterday I felt a LOT better on day two of chemo than I have in the past. No nausea to speak of and no headaches. I was wiped out. I probably slept about 20 hours yesterday, but at least I didn't feel sick. Perhaps they or on to something.

60 hours to round 5

The dread is setting in. Each round has been tougher (a lot) than the last and I am going into this round with less nausea medicine available. Zofran and Kytril gave me such blinding headaches during the last round that they are going by the wayside and Emend is being substituted. Through the first four rounds, I have only missed Kytril once and I got so sick that day that I never let this oversight happen again. Now I have to walk away from Kytril for the last two rounds, yeah this is going to be fun. I just can't run the risk of the headaches continuing to escalate. They kicked in during round three and by round four I was wearing dark glasses in the house with the curtains closed to try to keep them at bay. It is only two more rounds and I can do this, Chris did much more than this, but I sure don't want to walk in there Tuesday morning.
Tomorrow is the day to clean the house and stock the fridge in preparation for the week. Well okay, to be honest, the house is only going to get so much attention. I told myself that when I got a good job that I was going to hire a house cleaning service, but the rather substantial financial demands of cancer treatment put that on the back burner for now anyway. If anyone comes to visit, they are just going to have to accept me and my messy house the way that we are.
It is only two more rounds and then I am done with chemotherapy. I never thought that I would go through chemo myself after watching Jennie and Chris suffer the massive side affects and then die anyway. I did this for my own reasons and don't regret it, but never again.