I remember when I started this round of chemo that I thought it would be hard, but it had to be easier than last time. I thought it would lay me out a bit, because by nature that's what chemo loves to do to a person, but I was getting the Neulasta injection, so I should be fine.
I told all that to my chemo nurse going over the information preparing me for my next battle: AC. Those letters mean all kinds of things, but if you are in breast cancer treatment they mean dastardly things are going to happen to your body cell makeup.
When I told my nurse that I didn't think this go-around would be as severe, she was holding the notebook pointing at a fact with her finger and she paused and looked sideways. That sometimes means you are trying to create something to say. She paused a moment and said "we like the ones that have had chemo before starting this AC. They have a really good feel for what they are in for".
I thought she was being a bit dramatic. I have a friend who worked clear through her AC. I have read a couple of women that made it through ok. There are lots of things to read saying how bad it is, but I chose to believe that this one could not be as bad as the last one, ergo, I might have one bad week, but that still leaves two good weeks.
Ergo, my wimpy blood cells say otherwise - I'm in this over four weeks now, and I can maybe count four good days on four wavering fingers. Maybe. That includes the day I laid on the couch all day with a vibrating heating pad on my back to help with the bone pain.....
They gave me my chemo even though my blood work was quite low Friday week ago, and after the initial pre-drug "feel good" has worn off, this is the first time my head has been above water enough to even want to sit down in front of a computer.
The pre-treatment high dose steroids from the chemo carried me through till Monday morning, and after that crash I have no memory of the rest of Monday or Tuesday. I remember Scott dropping me off to braid the twins hair for school early Monday morning, and that my fingers would not work right, then I insisted I was "fine", walked home, got into bed, and as the song says, the lights went out in Georgia folks......
Tuesday Scott called home, I was sick, couldn't find my drugs, he didn't like the way I sounded, so he headed straight home. It wasn't pretty, he says.
Wednesday seemed a little better. But I started a dry cough. Thursday I had more dry cough. Friday, I was laid out sick. It felt like someone had taken a baby bottle brush to all of my bronchial tubes and that my esophagus was in shreds. Each time I coughed felt like I was moving that brush up and down, up and down.
I had been using my "magic mouth wash" hoping it would turn this to the better, but started putting calls into my doctors office Friday afternoon - *before 5pm this time* - and they told me they would send me a strong antibiotic (I sounded pretty horrible on the phone - like I was a 15 pack a day smoker). The nurse came back on the phone and mentioned that I sounded "very bronchial" - I agreed. She said it sounded like my airways were swelling and was I having trouble breathing, and I said yes. She said to get in the car and get there.
Suddenly flashing before my eyes were the headlines of the Columbus Dispatch last Friday in the waiting room: "MRSA" and "OSU Researching" -- and I suddenly started the famous "karen*back*away"......
I said "I'm still breathing ok" - even though I had been kneeling over a pillow all afternoon trying to get airways open and vomiting up gunky gunk. I had also started crying, which seemed to help somewhat loosen up and get things coming out.
Enough gore, I know.
So, after being on hold, talking, being on hold, talking, they agreed to start me on high dose antibiotics at home, and if my fever tiptoed over normal or if my airways tightened an "nth" more after starting these, I was to come down immediately.
I love those ladies.
***
The thing with chemo is that it stops all of your body's ability to make new cells. So the fastest and most regenerating cells in your body get it the worst. That's why your hair falls out. That's why they are fastidious about mouth sores - your mouth is the fastest healing part of your body because it regenerates new cells faster there - unless of course you have chemo holding that door. Then you could go weeks without a new cell being brave enough to tentatively step in and take over the damages.
They don't want you vomiting because not only does that affect your weight and overall health, but those that don't vomit don't tear up their esophagus and stomach as much - both parts of your body that has a lot to lose when they cannot regenerate new cells to heal up the tears from vomiting and chemo ulcers and such. Your gastro track the whole way through is taking quite a beating from chemo, and the less you alarm it with doing even more damage - like vomiting and or bad, croaky coughs - the better.
My doctor is not going to like this one little bit when I see her next time.
***
So Saturday, I am better, but my body thinks that moving my big toe is one big exertion, so we know my blood cell counts are pretty much dwelling in the basement somewhere. When I woke up at noon, I told Scott that I felt like I had been through Gettysburg and Antietam all in one week - and I mean no disrespect to soldiers - but I felt a bit battle worn, a bit shell shocked. I couldn't even talk very much. Scott kept talking to me and I mostly just smiled - it was the least amount of exertion.
Later in the afternoon he wrapped me up with lots of pillows and warm clothes and took me for a drive. When we had been in the car for a while it finally hit me why this had been so important to him - it was exactly four years ago that I had done the same thing for him when he had got out of the hospital and was not doing so well. I had driven him all over lower Ashland County in our little Prizm so he could drink in the beauty of the leaves and smell the fall air and hopefully put some health back into his bones - that's what I told him I was doing - driving to put health back into his bones - so Saturday, he held my hand and told me the air and the beauty of the leaves and the crispness in the air and him driving me - that it would put health back into my bones.
And I could barely scare up enough energy to move my lips to smile, but I did.
It was beautiful. We even did a very slow, deliberate walk on the Pleasant Hill Dam. And for the record, that was my total exercise for the day.
I don't think my $4,000 Neulasta Injection is holding up to it's worth. Next time, I may ask for the amount in gold and probably come out even. If you've not been to the bottom of the low blood cell pile, you just feel like breathing is a bonus and a workout. It's maybe where the word lethargic comes from. And the only thing you can do, is rest, and rest, and rest, and finally the cells start to rebuild.
Scott found today that what really helps that is homemade chicken gravy over biscuits with a side of green beans. Easy on the whole body.
***
I've had some pretty crazy dreams all through this the past week. I remember when I was up last night Scott asked me if I thought it was awful cold with the fan in the window, and I told him no, that "they" wanted the house cold. He asked me who "they" were, and I told him to look in the shower. I told him there were four of "them".
I was pretty unconcerned, but Scott was suddenly greatly concerned.
Scott is not easily spooked, but he did go look in the shower, just to be on the safe side. When your wife is talking a little crazy, you want to make sure she isn't filling up the shower with more than just soap bubbles, maybe.
But with the house crazy cold, I was completely content with the four others in the house and snuggled down into my warm double-down blanketed bed, and dreamt. And dreamt vividly. It was the type of dream that is one thing, but you know that there is an undercurrent reason below it all, and I woke up crying inconsolably.
This past month, my sister had been visiting from Oregon for three weeks, caring for my mother. With my chemo, then not doing so well, etc, etc, I only got a half hour visit in before they left. And even then, didn't get to talk to her.
She was seventeen when I was born, and from what I understand, took over a good amount of my care and interaction as an infant and toddler.
When my younger brother was born two and a half years later, words were used towards me like "wild injun", "birds nest", "savage", as in "why she just looks like a little savage, that one" - you get the picture.
My father insisted that I had long hair, but I didn't like it brushed - it was curly and always, always full of tangles. My mother didn't have the time nor the energy most days to fight me on it. I remember my sister one day trying to coax me to brush my hair - she sat me down beside her on the bed and got one brush stroke in. I wanted to be obedient because I worshiped her so, but I also didn't want to get my hair torn apart, so I moved one hop over on the bed. She moved one hop over and said low and sweet, "well now, doesn't that look nice", just like sweet oil flowing over a rusty hinge. She brushed another stroke, and I hopped another hop, she hopped another hop and by the time we got around the other side of the bed I remember I had a very pretty pony tail in my hair. I knew it was pretty because she said so the last three hops.
As my sister left my life, I cried and cried and cried with grief. And there in her stead, was my grandmother. She would pick me up and rock me, and rock me, and hum some songs and rock me some more.
My dream this morning was all about sometimes you don't get the best in life, sometimes you get second best or the leftovers or whatever some kind souls give you - but when I woke up I was crying because I was telling someone in my dream that "sometimes second best, is the best", and I was inconsolable because I don't think I ever told my sister that.
Not that she was second best, but that she took the time to stand in the gap for a spunky yet shy yet left alone a lot wee one. It wasn't first choice for children, but sometimes the second choice is the best after all.
So Mary Ann, I tell you now, I am grateful for what you poured into a wee one's life when you were a working teenager yourself.
I don't know what souls were walking about in my cold house last night, but I do know that they awakened something deep inside me that I like to forget or pretend is not there, but chemo always shreds that curtain and it's there and open and I think on it a lot at times then.
And after Scott's "pensive" looking in the shower last night, he said I should probably put my little excursion into Kaballah on hold for a bit.
I don't know. But I do know that when I wake up and smell something from my past that was so good and sweet, or when I wake up and feel someone stroking my hair telling me how pretty it is when they had just survived an epic battle of brush and tangle - I feel it deeply and it deeply prompts me to give it forward.
I don't know what these little ones around us will ever remember. I do pray daily that they remember a warmth and gentleness and love and acceptance and the knowing that I will always, always grab their hand and ask them "how are you dear?" just as my grandmother did for me.
I remember sitting on an upstairs bed gazing out a window with Mary Ann and there were beautiful apple blossoms all over our apple tree. I was entranced, and she smiled. It's a short memory, but a good one. I want the wee ones around me to remember gazing at the stars and knowing they were loved. I want them to remember stirring in the kitchen standing on a chair and know they were loved. I want them to remember building roads and popping with ideas of adding a zoo or adding a skyscraper or adding a farm all beside that road, and know they were loved.
Sometimes the kind soul standing in the gap is all that is needed for a gap in time to fill another's soul. It was done for me, and I am filled with dreams of gratefulness for it all.
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