Wednesday 10/25 - a bump in the road

I haven't updated in quite a while--which should be taken as a good sign. I tend not to update if things are going as planned! Indeed, we've all been grateful for how smoothly the last few chemo rounds have gone. The last cisplaten/doxorubicin round (started 9/24) was especially remarkable: like night and day, comparing to my experience the first time. Amazingly, even through the period of lowest energy and discomfort, I felt at peace-- and managed physically much better too: very little nausea and almost no extra counter-medications needed during or after. It's hard to say what made the experience so much better but I suspect having begun some meditation practice since the first round and knowing a little more what to expect both played a significant role.

It hasn't all been smooth sailing though, as I alluded to in the title... when you're dealing with drugs as powerful as those in chemo, the side effects can hardly be called "side" anything. At times, in fact, they're all-consuming and it becomes a rather scary puzzle to figure out what's happening and why. About a month ago, for example, I had the most intense pain of my life, mostly located around the chest and back. Fortunately, we did not find anything wrong with my heart or otherwise life-threatening and we eventually determined that it was just a bad case of chemo-induced acid reflux, i.e., it's avoidable. Phew!

The real bump for me, though, came more recently. A little over a week ago, I was around the end of what would be my normal 3-week recovery period from the c/d chemo. As I mentioned, things went shockingly well with that treatment--only I had started to lose sleep from getting excited about some theorizing and writing. I didn't really see this as a problem--and for quite a while, it wasn't: I was bouncing ideas off of other people and getting good feedback. It was a genuine burst of creativity at first, with perhaps just a tinge of manic over-eagerness. By this point, though (around the end of the recovery period), it had escalated quite a bit: several nights with almost no sleep. Finally, after some friends from undergrad who were visiting left, it culminated with me totally losing touch with reality. For about half a day, I was completely out of it (thinking really bizarre things, e.g., that Francis belongs to a higher universe) and my parents and friend Lily took me to the hospital to bring me back down. That half-day was the real scary part, in retrospect. For most of a week, though, I was still gradually shaking off the delirium; and thankfully, this past week--including my 5th round of chemo--I've been feeling good and grounded. Things seem to be back to the usual smooth-riding; or, you could say at least, the forecast looks clearer.

Part of this good outlook is that, as with the acid reflux, future mania/ delirium seems to be avoidable. We found out that a standard drug they use to help counteract nausea during the c/d chemo is a steroid, which is known to occasionally cause these kind of zealous reactions--and which several family members on my maternal side have been sensitive to specifically. As always, it's hard to know what caused a specific experience, but this suggests that the chemo cocktail was at least one important factor in what happened--perhaps taking my usual healthy enthusiasm for ideas and ramping it up out of control. Luckily, I don't have to (and won't) take the steroid during future treatments, as there are other anti-nausea medications that can be substituted in.

So that's where we are now: just getting back home from the 5th round of chemo and just past a couple bumps in the road. Next, there's one more round of methrotrexate (the less intense one) and then the surgery sometime around mid-november. I have a consultation about the surgery in a couple weeks so I'll update about that when I have more info.

In the meantime, happy Fall! Thanks for reading :)