Climbing Back up the Mountain with Good News

Last week was a difficult week for me. I woke up the day after my chemotherapy treatment feeling much more tired than usual.  I began to experience some severe lower GI issues that lasted multiple days and resulted in me becoming dangerously dehydrated and lacking any real desire to eat. I gradually improved through the week, but I still felt tired every day.  Just getting up the stairs at my office to get to my desk was enough to have me out of breath, and I wondered how on earth I could keep climbing this mountain with so little strength.

I was worried that chemotherapy this week would be all the more challenging if I was starting from several paces back.  My doctor was worried that one of the drugs I'm getting may have been the culprit for my intestinal distress, but the more we discussed it, the more we realized that, perhaps this didn't have anything to do with my treatment. As we talked about when the onset of symptoms started, it dawned on us that we may have made a rookie mistake. Perhaps, the Chinese Buffet where we had lunch at after chemotherapy last week was a very poor choice for an immune compromised person to have lunch. Perhaps that shrimp had been sitting out just a wee bit longer than it should have been.  The lesson has been learned. We will forevermore avoid the Chinese Buffet.

It's truly amazing what IV fluid replacement will do for a person. We added fluids to my treatment regimen this week, and I left chemotherapy yesterday feeling worlds better than when I walked in. In fact, I feel like I'm back to my normal self again. Well, the new normal, anyway.

Truthfully, nothing ever stays normal for long.  If there's one thing we can always count on it's that things are bound to change.  What's normal one day is totally abnormal another day.  For example, I never thought it would be a normal occurrence for me and my husband to own matching superhero socks. But now we have several pairs.

Change can be a very good thing. It's a very good thing when your doctor calls you early on a Friday morning to tell you that your tumor markers have changed again.  It's an extremely good thing when she tells you that they have gone from 408 down to 218.  That's a drop of 640 points from before I started treatment, and I'm only halfway through. We like this kind of change.

Last week at this time, I was feeling like I had fallen down the mountain. This week, I'm feeling strong enough to climb back up towards the top.  Thank you to everyone who keeps throwing me ropes and helping to pull me up. I'll get there as soon as I can.