This rest of this week has been, as you may have noticed, pleasantly slow for us. The horrid reverse-eating spectacular of Saturday was not repeated, and I have learned my lesson--and how--in terms of the anti-nausea drugs.
There is another silver lining: I have a much better understanding of what nausea is and what its levels feel like. Since the beginning of the process, during the month in the hospital, almost every medical professional entering our room would ask "are you feeling nauseous?" And I never had a very good answer.
I get carsick, rough enough seas will make me seasick, and certain food events--like some slimy broccoli I recall with great, pained clarity from a vegetable quesedilla in the late '90s--certainly bring on the desire to hurl, followed by the event itself. But those feelings are not so much nausea as the imminent clearing of the digestive system.
Nausea, that sedentary negative feeling of a horribly sad stomach, was not something I could pinpoint. Am I nauseous? I don't know. I just feel bad.
And, similarly, I now know whether or not the anti-nausea drugs are working: THEY ARE.
I now have a very clear sense of the differential. Nausea is not the 'here-it-comes' sense of seasickness. It is the permanent debilitating weakness and unrest of the stomache. I had always connected the about-to-hurl thing as the true test of nausea. And maybe without the drugs that is what happens. But when you are on the drugs you just have that endless negative sense in your gut. It is a located discomfort, and it doesn't move, because the drugs are softening it as much as possible. I have come to live with that at least a few days a week. but I can do that: live with that. No problem.
So now when a Dr asks if I am nauseous, I can tell them. And if they ask if the drugs are working, I can tell them. And every bit of good info you can give a Dr, and yourself, is a step in the right direction.
So hopefully we can avoid any repeat of last Saturday night's gut party, with it's intestine-slamming bass beats and its bile-spitting treble tones peeling back the drywall and warping the floorboards. Or, at least, that's how it felt for a while there.
The calendar looms, and with it change change change. This Phase is not as settled--there are shifts in the drugs and the schedules, to good effect and bad.
Good: Today marks the end of the pill-chemo Mercaptopurine for at least two weeks--no more daily two-pill pops that, while not as bad as any IV chemo, still cloaked me in a weighted feeling and added to the stomache unrest a little. Gone.
Good: no more self-stabbing for two weeks, and no more four-day-in-a-row chemo for two weeks. It will all come back in some form or another, but I have some time off.
Bad: 'Oh hello, Vincristine. Where you been? What's that? You would like nothing more than to slide into my veins, ruin my sense of taste, take a shot at balding me some more, and sap my strength? Sure, knock yourself out. Here, let me get in this chair and lay back so you can invade me with greater ease. Ready, dear?'
N noticed while editing blogs--my capacity for the speed-induced typo is legend and embarassing--that I spelled Vincristine with a 'ch,' like a girl's name, and now we both have an image of some hateful bitch who just wants to hurt me. I think N's protective spirit and her writer's ability to imagine have piled on, and now she really hates this fictional vamp with her slick demonic desire for damage. I am protected; well protected.
Good: Each and every day this week I have worked, doing some promo VO jobs Monday and spending time yesterday and today on an audiobook, working with employers who have been kind and generous with their time and patience.
Good: Each day brought greater strength, the capacity to visit other humans a bit, movies (A-team was stupid but a hoot, which is about my speed right now out in the world, and 'The Damned United' on DVD was a really amazing film, even if you don't like soccer...I mean, Futbol).
Bad: LIVE! DIRECT FROM HELL! THIS IS SPINAL TAP! Two more times. Thursday, Thursday, how I loathe ye.
Good: Then no more Taps for a while.
Good: Peg Apsaagenes, our old friend from early in the Protocol, which is the drug designed most specifically in this system to attack what I have. Though all the chemos do a job of killing fast-growing cells, I always felt best about the Peg, because it seemed like the closest thing to a custom job for me, so it is nice to have another shot of it.
Bad: Peg Apsaregenes, our old friend from early in the Protocol, is a very shit chemo, that not only stays in the system slowly un-Peg-ing for a long long time, but has a pretty solid kick that you feel for a while.
So Good and Bad: shocker. Life, broken into little boxes on a calendar and divvied up between the lovely, the horrid, the neutral, and the forgotten. That's not really any different than anyone else--perhaps a bit more extreme in shifts, but not really--so I will keep my yap shut and keep getting through it.
I have changed the workout I do in the mornings, having learned that I am still not ready for certain vigorous leg-raiser-y things, and I will set the bike up on the trainer in the next day or two--I have so many bike races DVR'd that I have to either get on the damn thing or fill up the hard-drive and stop taping anything else. I hit 150 pounds for the first time two days straight yesterday and today--in time for the next chemo: I think the up-and-down sine wave of weight will last throughout the protocol, but if I can keep 150 in sight then I am dong OK.
Thursday looms, but not until Wednesday unfolds, and this Wednesday I will spend some time out in the weather and the air! the air! pretending to be just like everyone else (haircut notwithstanding). And that is lovely, so I'll concentrate on that.
