Treatment Progress Check: As I write this Iām on Day 19 of a 21-day cycle. Currently I have completed 3 out of 5 cycles. I’m in the ‘break’ part of the cycle where I don’t have to take pills and can just recuperate, so I consider this cycle to be complete. However! I was set to start a new one on Tuesday and that’s been pushed back a week because my blood platelet count was too low. Nothing I can do to get more, so I just have to wait before Feel Worse Day comes around again. Aw, nuts š
Fun fact! Platelets are the things in your blood responsible for clotting up a cut when you’re bleeding. So, don’t attack me with a knife right now or anything, okay?
My radiation doc is funny. I can’t remember, but I may have mentioned his bizarre confidence earlier on in this journal. I mention him now because we had a follow-up phone call with him recently, and the confidence is still there, and makes us chuckle. He’s a good doc, and trustworthy I think, but he just has this belief that his branch of oncology is the superior one, and we kinda love him for it.
One of the first things he tried to do was establish that whatever bad side effects I experienced were the result of the chemo pills I was also taking, not the radiation, obviously. I may even have laughed a little in the meeting before realizing he was serious, but in my mind I’m thinking the chemo docs are gonna say the same thing, but reversed.
During our phone call recently, he surprised us again by saying, with complete confidence, that the cancer was in fact already gone! The radiation had saved the day, and things were now totally fine in there. (This without any follow-up imaging of any kind, which may only be in January). Also, any negative side effects I was still experiencing were, again, due to other treatments. Then he wished me a Happy New Year and hung up. And we laughed again.
I just love how sure he is. He may or may not be right! But it’s funny, months after radiation has ended, to get a call saying “yeah, you’re probably fine now, no worries, bye” in quick succession when he really doesn’t have hard evidence to back that up. At least, we thought it was funny. It’s that or get frustrated about it, but nyeh, no thanks.
I’ve been feeling surprisingly good this week, and really enjoying the simple pleasure of a chilled glass of water, because right now it doesn’t make my nerves freak out and my throat close up. This new delay in my treatment schedule means I’ll also get to spend my birthday (one week from today, as I write this) in the Treatment Break Zone, and maybe I do get to have an ice cream cake on the day after all. I may not. I haven’t decided. I actually haven’t decided anything about what I want to do for my birthday. I left it all up in the air because I didn’t know where it would fall in my treatment schedule and how I would feel when it came around, so I didn’t want to make any elaborate plans that I might have to give up on.
Anyway, I made my elaborate plan last year and almost gave up on it like two separate times because of sheer anxiety and self-doubt, which was when I declared that even though the party ended up being a great time, I was done with birthday parties. So right now the plan is, and will continue to be, nothing.
It’s a little tough because my b-day, being a Sunday, is just two days from the next Feel Worse day when I get the fourth IV chemo treatment. It’s not often in your life that you get to know the exact day that you will feel bad, like if you could predict a nasty flu with utter certainty. I know I’m working on this ‘mindfulness’ and ‘being present’ thing but I think it’s going to be at least a little tricky to celebrate, knowing that some fresh suffering is coming two days later.
Okay, that last line sounded a little over-dramatic when I read it back to myself. The treatments are surely not the worst thing a body can be subjected to. But the point remains that I still dread them. They cast a shadow on the days leading up to them, and I think that’s probably normal.
In any case I’m resolving right now to try and notice, and fully enjoy, all the normal things I get to do while I’m in the Treatment Break Zone. Let me gently encourage y’all to notice and enjoy the good things in your days as well, even if it’s as simple as a refreshing glass of water.