Week 10 checking in

Hi everyone

Well here we go, heading into the final TWO sessions. First let’s look at Week 10 and how that is going. I think the best way to describe what is going on now is to say “Cumulative effects are showing up everywhere!”  What I mean by that is the normal stuff you have been hearing me talk about for 5 months is still happening of course. By this I mean the progression from getting the drug on a Friday => to being sick as a dog for 7 days=>to climbing back just in time to have a few days of relative normalness=> to getting the next treatment is still the scenario I am dealing with. But now there are added complications that I want to describe so I can give you the total picture.

What I am seeing now is what I call all the “weird stuff” that is associated with Chemotherapy starting to play out. Some examples of “weird stuff” include fissures in the mouth and throat, extreme  dryness of hands with fissures around the fingernails. The fingernails themselves are doing strange things. The top layer of some of my fingernails is peeling back, sort of like pulling sun burned skin but instead of a layer of skin you can peel back a thin layer of finger nail! More examples of weird stuff that I am dealing with include:

 

 

ü  Chemo Fog—I am unable to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes at a time before I lose track of what is going on. Carol is getting real tired of telling me things 6 times and each time I have to tell her “Oh yeah, I kind of remember talking about that with you”.

ü  Dizziness—If I try to do too much work (read emails, talk on the phone, etc) I start to get dizzy. This is similar but different to Chemo Fog. This is a physical sensation of having no sense of balance and limited ability to walk and talk clearly

ü  Muscle pain and weakness—I have pains that start in various muscles in my body, mostly in the legs and arms. The chemo has left me unable to physically do anything without having this muscle pain. I am also very weak and can't lift or carry anything

ü  Hair loss—I have been looking for hair loss all during the first round of chemo and all during this round with no luck. Seriously, I was kind of hoping to go bald so I could see what it looked like!! Its not falling out in huge clumps or anything but it is “thinning” really quickly now. You can see my scalp all along the top and front of the head.  I’m going to have Carol cut my hair this week and we may end  up shaving it depending on how it looks

ü  My vocal cords are damaged—For those of you who I have spoken to, you can hear that my voice sounds like Mickey Mouse. The chemo has damaged cells in the voice box area and I can't talk for more than a minute before I start squeaking like Mickey. It is very annoying since a large part of what I do for my job is talk on the phone.

ü  Diarrhea—This probably does not count as “weird stuff” but it is not fun and it does affect me in that the diarrhea hurts and I am dealing with enough pain without this pain in the ass!

 

I am dealing with all this stuff and now that we are close to the end, these things are not going away during the off week. They are sticking around right through the off week and then they are front and center for the bad week. Since the bad week is primarily dealing with sickness and  nausea, these things take a back seat for awhile but they are there and they need to be dealt with before I can be 100% back to normal (and able to put a full day of work in)

I believe that the smartest thing for me to do is to start my 6 week disability plan the week after next. That would be from the week of Feb 22^nd  through the week of March 22^nd   

That would mean I would have 1 week of nausea from the last treatment then 5 weeks with no drugs. During this last 5 weeks I would get as much rest that I could with the goal being to eliminate the 6 Weird Things from my list above. I really believe that I need to take this time to fully recover or I will never get back to normal and could actually cause more problems.

 

So that is the plan and we will see how it goes. Hope all is well with everyone!

Peace and Love

John