I definitely have my good days and my bad days. After the first treatment, I began to understand how it ebbs and flows. There are a lot of euphemisms that can be attached the feelings.
It’s like surfing.
Or it’s like being on a rollercoaster.
Or it’s like a storm with sparkly clean days to follow.
The days right after chemo aren’t so bad. The days following those days: lots of fatigue, sleeping, and soreness from the antibody shots. Then the depression sets in. It’s not necessarily depression manufactured within the recesses of my own hormones and chemicals. It feels different from the “bummed out” days. I have to remind myself that chemo makes you depressed. My mantra for those days? It’s the meds, it’s not you.
Or, as we have begun saying in my family: fuck the meds, I just want a happy day.
The plan is to cross-stitch this onto a pillow or something. Perhaps, I’ll make a t-shirts and be one of a few that understands its meaning.
To a certain extent, I was lonely when working full time and completing graduate classes, because I was always busy. I had no social life. I had moved away from some of my friends and it became harder to call them up or join in activities at the last minute. I would be excited to have an outing at a restaurant because it would be outside the norm.
Now, it’s a different kind of lonely: the kind of lonely where I’m forced to think about things that I wanted to avoid. For example, I’m a patient person with other people, but with myself, I’m my own worst critic. Being left to my own devices is a bit devastating because I feel so unproductive.
It’s hard because I want to put on a brave face for the people I care about. I want them to feel the success of my treatment as much as I do. But I also want to protect them from seeing me at my worst or when I’m down. This is probably the most difficult aspect of the cancer process, I’ve discovered. I like to think I’m a compassionate person and perhaps someone who puts other people before me. This situation has taken that away from me and forced me to take care of myself. I wonder why I have ignored this for so long.
I had a reaction to the first drug in my 2nd chemo treatment on Friday. The Rituxan helps antibodies and the nurse began to increase the rate that it was going into my body since my vitals were looking good. I began to have chills and started shaking. My mother, staying with me the entire duration of this chemo, began to look alarmed. The nurse and doctor were keeping a close watch on me and just stopped the IV to let my body recover. They covered me with blankets and I just sat there and shook for a while, though I couldn’t tell you for how long. My mom said my face went sheet white, blue veins began to appear in my face, and my lips began to turn bluish. Apparently, this was the reaction they were trying to avoid in the hospital during the first treatment. After my chills and subsequent fever subsided, the treatment continued.
I had a small amount of sadness to realize that I was the first person at the oncology center to arrive and the last one to leave.
For the rest of the day, my stomach felt sour and my taste buds were off (as usual), but I was reeling more from the realization of what just happened. In retrospect, it’s unnerving because of the psychology of the things they put into my body for the sake of killing off the mass. It affects my thoughts and I think that requires more recovery time than the actuality of the stuff inside of me.
Then again, it’s the meds, it’s not me.
So, in jumping off the depression train, I’m trying to create a list of happy thoughts in my head for the times when I feel down. I’m learning to meditate and center myself through all the fog and anxiety.
I would also like to start a little garden in the backyard. Just so I have something to work on and have the opportunity to watch something grow. Maybe it will placate some of my own dark thoughts and create something positive.
A reminder to myself: there are better days ahead.
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