Nov
08
Apparently my pain and torment is my own doing. My chemo (capecitabine) is supposed to be taken daily for two weeks followed by a week off. Guess who forgot to take a week off? Yes, the genius with the stomach cramps over here. So, instead of two weeks on chemo I went for nearly five. This, according to the literature, is what is known as an overdose. Pretty scary.
No doubt I am proving someone’s argument about patients not being responsible enough to self-administer chemo. I myself can hardly fathom my screw-up. I wonder how much damage I’ve done & how long it will take to undo. This is my third day off chemo and the pain has barely abated.
You know that old Talking Heads song? I keep hearing it, skipping over and over in my mind; the part where he says, ”And you may ask yourself: My god, what have I done?”
Nov
05
I have a high tolerance for pain. Anyone who knows me well – family members, doctors, estheticians – will confirm this. My husband and I agree: I am tough. Not French Foreign Legion tough, but maybe Canadian Special Forces tough.
However, for the last 12 hours and, to a lesser extent, for 48 hours before that, I’ve been enduring wave after wave of intense abdominal pain. I emit weird primal noises and make fists and kick one foot around like a dog dreaming of chasing rabbits… And then the pain passes and, like a crazy person, I type some more.
It’s the drugs – my hitherto mild-mannered capecitabine and lapatinib are now mercilessly kicking my butt. Causing stomach cramps, intestinal cramps, nasty, painful, crampity-cramps and no small measure of the trotskys… If it were possible to be punched in the solar plexus and kneed in the nuts while in labour, that’s how I feel.
I have a hot water bottle pressed against my stomach at all times. My husband makes them so hot they have to be wrapped in gigantic towels for the first couple of hours. I may have poached my innards. Don’t care – the relief is glorious.
My mom is now here, taking over where my husband left off when he went to work this morning. She has fed me mashed bananas and electrolytes and soda crackers. She is busy in the kitchen now – I can hear her over my own weird primal noises; the comforting sound of her clattering around down there.
Another wave is coming. I really need to stop with the typing. Viva Imodium! Charge!
Mar
19
Today I learned one of those little things nobody tells you about life after chemo…
You know all that money and time and pain-management you have invested over the years in a little beauty ritual known as waxing your legs? You know how after many years of such investment, the hair started thinning a bit, growing back a little more sparsely, the roots weakened and eventually (say after about 12 years) these little torture sessions became more tolerable? Well our friend chemo resets the clock on all this. When your hair grows back – right after you have celebrated the fact that you actually have hair to wax again after months without – you will find that those little roots are as deep and tough and determined as praire grass. Just like they were way back in the beginning of your first foray in to the world of waxing.
In a word: YEOUCH!
Still, I’m not complaining. Well I am, obviously, but I’m grateful to have hair at all and what’s the pain of a leg wax compared to the myriad evil side-effects of chemo?
To those of you who are hairless: go baldly and bravely onward, knowing you will one day have hair again.
To those who have hair again: go boldly and bravely back to your esthetician knowing you’ve been warned.
Aug
25
I’ve always thought that women had a much higher pain treshold than men but apparently we merely suffer more pain than men, according to the results of a new study, and doctors aren’t giving us enough medication to help it. A little less pharmaceutical help coursing through our veins, though, may not be such a bad thing
