Still totally FECked...

Day 122

  

General status update

FEC cycle 6, day 7

Fatigue/weakness: off the scale - this is getting very tedious.  PLEASE DESIST: I WANT MY LIFE BACK NOW

Anxiety level/insane euphoria (+/- 1-10,000): Great Big Dexy Fail -  fatigue beats all.

Nausea demon: he woke me up at 4.45 a.m., the little b***ard. I know he is trying to go out with a bang and not a whimper, but that was just not funny.

Despair Demon: Yeah, he’s right. Everything is tending towards a state of entropy, and the sooner we get there the better. WE’RE ALL DOOMED.

Chemo Muse: I’ve told her I’m on strike until I’m feeling better. Tools downed. Everyone reaches the end of their tether at some point, and I’m RIGHT THERE RIGHT NOW.

Chemo Brian: He needs to cut off that stupid pony tail – it looks ridiculous on a demon his age.

State of mind: the physical problems are nasty, but if anything the psychological side effects are now worse. During the  last couple of days I have started losing it, melting down at the slightest provocation. In sum, feeling extremely irritable and bad-tempered, and very unattractively sorry for myself – best avoided at all costs.

This is just horrible.

The last few days have taught me that I didn’t even understand the meaning of the word ‘fatigue’ until now. The exhaustion that is now overwhelming me is epic, completely debilitating, and on a quite different scale from the weakness and tiredness that I suffered during the earlier chemo cycles.

I just can’t do anything except lie down, and when I do get up to make a cup of tea or go to the bathroom, it makes me so tired I have to lie down again very quickly. I’m desperate to get outside into the sunshine, now that there is at last a bit of sunshine today, but I’m not even confident of getting as far as Brook Green, which is only 5 minutes walk away.

FEC6 (and presumably the cumulative, lingering effects of FECs 1-5) has taken ALL my strength away. There is nothing I can do but wait and hope for it to come back.

I’m still suffering from all the stomach-related side effects as well, albeit muted by the steroids,  and am now feeling worse, all-round, than at any time since the day I started chemo in December. It’s only now I can do virtually nothing at all that I realise how much I was still managing to do earlier.

I’ve written more than 120,000 words on this blog over the last four months (how did I do that??), but now I’m finding it hard to type even a few sentences.

I hate that. I want the blog to finish on a positive note, with renewed energy, and me beginning to get stronger again - that doesn’t seem likely to be happening any time soon, though.

Instead I'm writing less and less, starting to go completely stir-crazy after 4 months of virtual house arrest, and whining more and more.

Sorry about that.

I also have a horrible feeling I may have whined in exactly the same way during the worst days of all 6 cycles of FEC, and am now simply repeating myself ad nauseam - but I haven't read back and I certainly can't remember, what with Chemo Brian having made away with my brain.

Please send spinach.