It seems that I am once again delinquent in addressing this
Blog as I feel it is important to write relevant material and not just
summaries. It seems that, of late, I
have been doing the latter and addressing only pertinent issues to date. Maybe that is how it should be but I enjoy
writing about how I am right now even if I cannot pull myself to actually do
that. That probably doesn’t make sense
to those of you who are busy, organized and have your life in order. These days I have none of those qualities and
am trying to make a new reality work. My
most recent Chemo session was on Jan 2 and it was not a great way to start the
New Year.
Before I get to that I must comment on the fact that we
enjoyed a wonderful Christmas at Lake Bernard with Tara-Lee, Brehn and
Kaia. The festivities were plentiful,
complete and busy as most of our family events are. The weather helped us to enjoy some outdoors
time doing what people do in the winter.
We ate well and had a few toasts to friends and family who were not
readily available this Christmas season.
Kaia provided much entertainment as she rocked the Christmas thing and
helped everyone with their packages from the big Guy from the north. Her use of the English language and the
language of Kaia is amazing as she forms complete sentences that astound you
with their complexity. The time together
was both appreciated and enjoyable. We
also managed to FaceTime with Gray, Bree and Skylar in Pemberton and actually
opened gifts in this almost real time environment. It was fun to watch Skylar’s expressions as
she opened her gifts. She has grown up
so much and appreciates the gifts and thought put into gifts by her Gramma.
The balance of the holiday season was spent at Lake Bernard
with only a few trips to the city for Freddi as she had to work some of the
holiday. It is a busy season in the
sporting industry. We enjoyed our New
Years Eve celebrations with a hearty dinner with friends and family. It was a nice relaxing evening of chatter,
laughs and some serious discussions on world affairs and other important
subjects. The important thing is that
the old guys stayed awake until 2019 slid into place. It was a comfortable evening with friends
providing us with memories to add to our succession of NYE parties at the Lake.
Then came the time to get back to reality as my Chemo
session that should have happened on Christmas day was delayed to Jan 02. To give perspective I have included here an
excerpt from an email to a friend on Day 2 of my 3rd session of Round 4. I only include it here to provide relevance
during the time on Chemo. As previously
mentioned I would like to write when in the “effects” but I find it difficult to
gather that energy to get it clearly documented. Regardless, I include this excerpt from that email herein:
Jan 03, 2019
“This week is a Chemo week so I feel like shit and am being my
recluse self until such time as I feel like talking and visiting with
people. I am fortunate as I have until Sunday morning before I have to
face the expectant travels with varying degrees of self-assuredness and
frustration with technology, impatience with airline planning that does not
immediately align with their desires and a fair share of plain entitled people
who do not give a shit that you are talking to another such person when they
barge into conversations their “important” question. Fortunately, I do
meet others who are their antithesis and manage to save the day from my
perspective. But I digress. My Chemo session was planned for
Wednesday due to rituals of New Year where few people are required to work so I
went ahead and did my blood test on Monday. Shortly after I received a
“fail” in my tests by way of a voice mail that instructed be to “do over” on
Wednesday to see if my WBC count reaches the minimum acceptable level to
inflict poison into the body. I left work early to get the tests done and
read before my treatment at 10:00 am. I guess by eating copious amounts
of rich food, lots of alcohol and late nights I was able to coax my WBC’s to
get working and I was admitted to the controlled poison centre for my bi-weekly
treatment. That session went without a hitch and I was able to catch up
on some badly needed sleep. Now I have my counter Chemo pills to control
the side-effects of killing Cancer cells on the go and am trying to balance and
anticipate the movements from one side-effect to the other ranging from nausea,
listlessness, sleeplessness, lack of appetite and dehydration to the more
uncomfortable bodily functions such as vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, cramps
showing up in no particular order. This tends to slow down and then abate after
I have my bottle of Chemo removed after 48 hours. That brings me to
Friday at noonish when I start the rebuilding exercise again to repeat the
treatment on Jan 16th.”
In actual fact, the date of my next Chemo is Jan 15th
and I just received a reminder from the hospital to be at that
appointment. I am now on Day 8 after the
treatment and I am feeling better but not 100%.
This go around had no unusual effects and the full spectrum of offensive
side effects inflicted over the period. The
real benefit each day is that the next day will be less uncomfortable and inconvenient
than the one I am living at the moment.
I mention inconvenient as I always try to keep a normal pace going but
have to adjust according to degrees of nausea, constipation or diarrhea,
fatigue etc. This time around I found
myself being alone a good deal of the time as I had consciously trimmed my
activities based on the rather frantic pace experienced in December. My bottle
was removed as planned last Friday and my level of nausea and discomfort was at
its highest at that point. I am using the
“antidote” drugs as prescribed and they certainly do reduce the impact. This session was particularly annoying as I
never seemed to gather enough energy to do anything constructive. I managed a bunch of small household type
projects fixing things, building fires, cooking and some good reading time but
the sum total of all those things were less than satisfying. It certainly feels better now as I managed a
city trip to see a Dr., join a company meeting and do some shopping. I expect that the day will end with a deep
sleep. The upside is that it is a whole
6 days before I visit the QCH again.
Hopefully I will be able to get a few things off my “todo” list.
Freddi and I are planning a short Cancun vacation in early
February and a two week stay in Kauai in early March. We might try to pull off some other short
warm weather trip during the winter but time will be an issue.
I have taken up enough of your time and I think you for
dropping in to see how things aare shaping up.
Please feel free to drop a line should you have any questions or wish to
seek any clarification on this note.
Be well ......
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