#13


i'm at the point in this story series where i am starting to worry that anyone that is following along with me is probably thinking, "okay, gee-zus, man. we get it. you're taking a little pill every night that gives you a little upset tummy and makes you bitch a lot about being tired. shut the fuck up, already." then again, i guess, if that's the case, maybe those people have just stopped clicking on the link by now.

i digress.

i've commented to this point (i think) that every cycles seems to have it's good days, it's bad days, and it's worst days. truth be told, this cycle has been a challenge. i could only count the first couple as "good". there have been two "worst" days (the throw-up day and the zoo day), but the rest, to some degree, can absolutely be categorized as "bad". i feel like i'm due some peaks to contrast the valleys, but maybe this is just a product of how long the medicine has been in my system at this point. it didn' take nearly as long to ramp back up in my system, ergo the side effects manifested more quickly and and are more stubborn to cycle through.

i was joking around monday night after watching the guys play softball about how bad i felt, and mark mc. half-jokingly said, "you should just stop." i thought about it for a half-second, too. surely, what's done is done. if it takes eleven more of these pills to keep this thing from coming back again, i fear it was going to come back again anyway. maybe that's not the right way to look at it. maybe that's not the point.

i suppose the point is we set out at the beginning of this thing to do a year. we knew the warnings. "treatment changes lives." it did. it has. it is. but i've done it. i'm going to do a full year, and i'm praying to the chemo gods that it was a year's worth of pain for the reward of many years ahead of me being cancer-free. i'm praying.

#13

toxicities present:

i went to lunch again, like an asshole, at rock 'n roll sushi thinking this time would be different. it wasn't. the initial taste of each bite was so, so delicious, but then my poor little mouth burned and burned and burned. i'm not going back til i'm well again. i don't want to create a block in my head towards rnr.

stomach has been super-messed up today. cramping. water babies. more cramping. more water babies. the works.

i am so tired. not sleepy tired. just soooo sluggish.

my feet aren't that bad today. still super tender in a couple spots on each foot, but i'm not dealing with any shooting pains or radiating up my calves pain.

is chemo brain a real thing? some say yes. some say give me a break. i haven't spent any time on cognitive impact of the medicine yet, because i'm not confident that i'm suffering from it to date on this cycle. today was the first day something felt off, though, not unlike other days i've experienced on other cycles. maybe more on this later.

death by a thousand cuts.

pain (scaled 1-10):

4.5

while eating: 7

brushing teeth: 9