Meet the New Boss

Housekeeping

A bunch of readers have let me know in different ways that they appreciate my honesty and vulnerability while writing about this journey I’m on. I’m flattered and glad that this is valuable to someone other than me! To be honest I’ve often wondered, while writing, whether I’m oversharing. And to be even more honest, I haven’t shared everything, because I do want to retain just a little bit of personal dignity and privacy! But I don’t see the point of writing this all out if I’m not able to be at least a bit Real with y’all. So, thanks for your feedback 🙂

This Past Week

Well, the big news was starting this new round of treatments on Thursday. The various combinations of chemotherapy drugs seem to be named after bosses from video games, and mine’s called XELOX¹, or CAPOX. This page has a pretty good rundown of the stuff I’ve heard from the medical professionals I’ve spoken to. I assumed the side effects would ramp up slowly again but nope, that cold sensitivity hit right away. If I drank room-temperature water I’d feel my throat start to constrict. If I washed my hands with cold water it felt like grabbing a metal railing in winter. And hiccups! I’ve had so many hiccups in the past couple of days. Stuff like that. It’s not intolerable (except the hiccups), but it just makes things…weird, for lack of a better term. Something to do with my nerves being all worked up from the treatments.

I was also able to get time with the CancerCare counsellor this week, which was good to do. We mainly had a kind of ‘getting to know you’ chat where I occasionally went off on tangents. I was glad for the outlet and I look forward to future visits.

I won’t go into a lot of detail about the session, but one thing I did admit to was the desire to Play the Cancer Card sometimes. By this I mean; I want to shut down complainers around me (*cough*mykids*cough*) when they’re being too noisy about problems that I deem to be minor. Like, a real sarcastic, “Oh, your monster truck is broken? That sounds ROUGH, but at least you don’t have CANCER”. Obviously this isn’t helpful — other people’s problems are real to them, and as the saying goes, just because I have a broken leg doesn’t mean you don’t have a sprained ankle, you know? It’s a difficult impulse to rein in.

I will say that I’m proud of one occasion where I was able to find common ground between our problems. Lori and I were going to a doctor’s appointment for me, and Cassidy wasn’t thrilled about where she was headed for childcare that day, so, she was complaining as we got ready to leave. My first impulse was to try and shut it down, but instead I found a place of empathy and said “You know what, this isn’t fun for any of us right now. Nobody wants to be doing what we’re doing.” And I think it helped! It helped me, anyway.

One More Thing

I got the ice cream cake the night before starting treatments again 😄

Looking Ahead

Like I’ve said, I’m currently doing five rounds of this Xelox. Right now I’m just learning the ups and downs of how these next few weeks will feel. Every day’s been a little different so far. But, for the most part — not worse.

1. “Xelox” sounds like something large and armored that you’d encounter in the Legend of Zelda, for instance ↩︎