It's all about the chemo

Day 66

General status update 

Fatigue/weakness: Severe. Walking from one end of the flat to the other is quite a challenge, today. I don’t like this AT ALL. 

 

Hair: Secondary consideration, really, now I can barely walk. 

Nausea demon: Making sympathetic noises, bringing me drinks: this is no fun for him, as he needs me to be strong enough for the chemo so he can start tormenting me again. 

Chemo Muse: Urging me on, but even she can see that I’m too weak to produce much today. 

Chemo Brian: He came and joined me on the bed this morning, until lunch-time – I didn’t have the energy to make the journey to the sofa..

Anxiety level (1-10): R has caught a cold, which he may or may not have caught from me. Now quite worried about re-catching the original cold (can you do that?), or acquiring the new one, if different. I am so weak, and so overwhelmingly tired, today that I’m scared I’m going down with it already, and that the increased weakness is resulting from the effect on my embattled neutrophils of trying to fight off yet another infection. I’m not sure they’re strong enough to be doing overtime.

State of mind: Wishing there was a neutrophil thermometer; my temperature is OK at the moment, but I’m so weak it feels as if my remaining neutrophils are starting to abandon ship - they’re sure as hell not showing any signs of regeneration.

 

Yesterday I was feeling very weak, but was still able to walk down the road to Marks & Spencer, a distance of maybe 400 yards, to buy a lemon drizzle cake because my friend Andrea was coming round in the afternoon (we never got round to eating it, what with all strawberry cupcakes Andrea brought – now I’m left with a whole lemon drizzle cake wailing for attention from the kitchen, dammit). 

This morning, in contrast, I didn’t feel able to get out of bed until lunch-time, and spent much of the morning asleep; when the need for a cup of coffee finally forced me to attempt the journey from the bedroom to the kitchen, I felt like Shackleton at the end of a very long day staggering through an Antarctic blizzard, dragging a sledge; every step was the most enormous effort. 

 

 

Sitting here at my computer keyboard, now, even my fingers feel weak. I’m typing so slowly I’m practically doing it one letter at a time. This level of weakness is frightening, to be honest. I doubt it’s the result of a couple of hours enjoying myself yesterday; it may be I’m going down with another infection. I do hope not. But I’m much weaker than I was on Monday, when I was able to walk down to the hospital, albeit only just. 

I just checked my temperature, however, and it’s fine, so this is probably just a continued post-viral malaise, exaggerated into something scarier by my hypochondria. Getting cancer in no way prevents you from continuing to be a world class hypochondriac; and, let us never forget, my current terrifying state of physical debility has absolutely nothing to do with the cancer – it’s all about the chemo. Three doses of chemo plus a respiratory infection have made me this ill, not the cancer; and now I've got to get strong again so that they can give me three more doses of poison.

I can’t write the blog post I wanted to do today because Chemo Brian is calling me from the sofa, and I need to get back there soon, before I just slump face down over the keyboard and wake up later with ‘qwertyuiop’ engraved on my face.

Got to go, as rest is now imperative  – I’ll try again tomorrow.