"So, How Are You Doing?"

I finished my first full week with foreign chemical flowing through my body.  So, as many of my friends have asked, rather gingerly at times, “How are you doing?”

 

I have to say I’m doing better than I expected to be doing at this stage.  But then my expectations were based on a limited scope of knowledge.  Before you actually become a cancer patient yourself and you haven’t been around someone with cancer, you really can be pretty insulated from the process.  You hear about people going through cancer treatments; they lose their hair, lose weight, and they throw up a lot.  Then they either get better or follow a long downward glide towards an undesired outcome.

 

So, how am I doing?

 

On a very positive note, I have not been nauseous.  Not once.  Yay!  Nowadays I’ve been told that there are medications to help prevent the nausea, but having not experienced it, my nausea medicine is just sitting idle in its bottles.  Wendy suggested “Why take them if you’re not nauseas? There are two drugs I’m supposed to take in ping-pong fashion every four hours.  One has the side effect of “may cause headaches” and the other “may cause drowsiness.”  So  while nausea is avoiding me naturally, I don’t need to take on those side effects on  as well.

 

My taste buds feel like a my tongue has a cardboard filter.  Most food tastes kind of drab.  Sweets sneak through a little bit, but not enough to be very satisfying.  Crackers offer a decent eating experience with their salt and texture.  The worst so far was a fish sandwich. -  cardboard mush.

 

My voice this entire past week has been hoarse.  I sound like a guy who spent all day  yelling at a sporting event the day before.  It sounded a little more normal today.

 

My digestive tract is affected.  The plumbing is a little backed up.  Aaaand, that’s all you need to  know  about that.

 

My farsightedness is affected slightly.  Things are a little more blurry without glasses.  My eye doctor said that chemo can dry your eyes out a little, and vision can be affected as a result.

 

So, all things considered, not bad considering I’ve got a batch of cell killers and poison running through my veins.