One Weird Trick

Housekeeping

• There may only be two weeks left in this course of treatments but I’ve added a calendar thing to the right sidebar. If you’re driving and you have questions or need clarifications, feel free to reach out!
• PostHope (the site where I had started journaling, which shut down unexpectedly) has been updating their farewell page to say backups of our journals should be available soon! When they are, I’ll repost them here.

This Week

The first treatment of the week was set for a very early time in the morning, so rather than get up even earlier, we decided to drive in the night before and stay at a nearby hotel. Very nearby — it’s connected to the hospital complex and walking from my room to the radiation therapy area took less than ten minutes. We found a place elsewhere for my daughter Cassidy to stay the night, because she found out the hotel didn’t have a pool and immediately lost all interest in coming along. Priorities 😂

This week I also crossed the halfway point for my treatments! “It’s all downhill from here,” said Lori, before we both realized there must be a better way to phrase that. The side effects of the chemo/radiation have still been surprisingly manageable, and between treatments I’ve been up and about much more than we expected by this point. This is what I’m dealing with, and I do hope it doesn’t get too graphic:

• Low-level nausea most days, for which I take tiny orange pills that help.
• Fatigue, as mentioned in the previous post. This one is worst in the evenings, when I feel I could just lie down wherever I am in the house and have a nap. Kitchen floor? No problem.
• The radiation is known to soften the contents of your bowels, and there have been a few days where Imodium has become very necessary to take. Things have also become itchy and uncomfortable the rest of the time.

Overall I’m upright and generally chatty while I drive back and forth to Winnipeg with people! What’s my secret? I don’t know! If I put up a pie chart of contributing factors, it would contain Diet & Nutrition, which a wonderful dietitian from my church helped me get a strong start on even before treatments began. It would also contain Natural Defenses, I suppose. Maybe Positive Mental Attitude? But I believe a big chunk would be The Power of Prayer; so many folks have let us know that I and my family are on their minds. I wouldn’t know what exactly the proportions would be, and I wish I could sell my One Weird Trick that Doctors Hate and make a million bucks.

(My One Weird Trick is showing up on time to scheduled appointments and following recommendations by experts, I guess.)

Because things seem to be going well and we’ve crossed the halfway mark, it can be easy for to start thinking that if I just get through the next couple of weeks, this whole crazy experience will be over and things can all go back to normal. I’m trying to remind myself, not unkindly, that this is still a marathon, not a sprint. Once this treatment course is done I’ll get a few weeks to recover — side effects are supposed to be at their worst about 10 days after treatment ends — and then there’s likely to be even more chemotherapy. Months of it. And then of course, probably surgery and the whole recovery/adjustment period afterward.

There’s a lot left to do. But, that doesn’t mean we won’t celebrate the milestones and achievements and good things along the way. I’ve seen that bell in the radiation treatment room, and I’m gonna be glad when it’s my turn to ring it.

Looking Ahead:

It’s a week of 5 treatments, then my final week of 4. I’ve noticed that the 4th treatment in a row is always my toughest mentally. The fourth day is the one where I start out grumpy, crossing my arms and muttering “this sucks and I don’t wanna”…and then going anyway.

16 of 25 radiation treatments and 128 of 200 pills down. As The Ramones once sang, “Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!”