I think I'm spending a good chunk of my days now trying to not think about food or getting sick.
I'm near the end of my first weekend on chemo now, and it's the first two days I've had without treatments, so I figured it'd be a cakewalk. Not quite. Here's a little summary of my weekend so far: Friday, in bed by 9 p.m. (due to nausea). Awake at 9 a.m. Saturday. Ate two baked potatoes (very slowly), showered, dressed, went out to run some errands. Came home at 2 p.m. because I was tired and feeling a little sick. Took a three-hour nap (pants off nap...there's a critical difference between a pants-on nap and a pants-off nap. While some may say the difference is whether you're wearing pants, and they're smart-asses, it's a world of difference between how refreshing the nap is), ate some ravioli, went on a 2-mile walk with the wife, came home, tried to watch a movie and went to sleep at 9 p.m. I just woke up this morning at 9 a.m. and forced myself to eat breakfast (a Rice Krispie treat, two packages of pudding, half a tin of mandarin oranges and two bites of a banana...I'm like an anorexic goat).
So, let's recap. So far this weekend, I've gotten 24 hours of sleep (27 hours if you count the pants-off nap), and my Sunday just started 2-1/2 hours ago. There were times in college when I would get 24 hours of sleep in a week...and feel rested. I've spent more time sleeping this weekend than I have in forever and I still feel sick and slightly tired.
Not only that, but I have to psych myself up to eat and try and figure out exactly what I can put into my stomach that will likely stay there. This may seem over-dramatic, and it's possible I am overreacting to this, but I'm not convinced. My doctor asked me last Friday if I'd thrown up yet and seemed genuinely impressed when I told him I had not. There have been several times I've felt like throwing up, but haven't, because it just seems pointless. All the reading I've done on chemo has attributed nausea to the affect the medicine has on your brain and messing with your stomach lining. When I've thrown up in the past, it's always been to get something out of my stomach I didn't want in there anymore (alcohol, bad seafood, a spare quarter, etc.). Now, when I feel like throwing up, I think about how it's not to get anything out of my stomach I don't want in there...it's just because I'm on some medicine that's messing with the part of my brain that wants me to get rid of food I put in there for absolutely no reason. That annoys me...hence the reason why I haven't gotten sick yet: spite. I'd say a majority of the decisions I make is based on spite, even when it's me fighting against my brain.
I've got medication to help with the nausea, and it seems to do a halfway decent job when I have it. The fun part is, my insurance company (which previously tried to deny allowing me a port to take chemotherapy because it's a bit more luxurious than stabbing at my veins during 21 separate sessions) decided that my severe nausea medication would only be covered once every 24 days. Not a big deal, right? Well, not really until you take into account that my severe nausea medication is six pills, to be taken once every 8 hours. Now, I'm no mathemagician, but....8 hours x 6 pills = 48 hours = Two days of non-sick Greg every 24 days. I'm just giddy with excitement trying to figure out which two days I'm going to use next month (as I've already used up my allotment this month). I'm thinking Halloween and then maybe save the others to pool around my birthday in November. This is so exciting...I feel like a prison inmate that's been given a few packets of salt to use on whatever prison meal I choose over the next several years!! Insurance companies are the tops!
Despite some overly-dramatic comparisons and the past couple of blog posts on here touching on insanity, this chemo isn't devastating. In fact, if I could just forget I was going through it, I'd likely spend a lot of my day oblivious. My problem is I keep self-assessing myself, paranoid of reaching a point where I'm sick and I dont' realize it (which makes zero sense). I feel like if I don't constantly monitor my body, it's going to do something without my knowledge, and before I know it I'm in the middle of a supermarket perusing the samples of ordinary foods on toothpicks when my body decides to empty my stomach all over the floor. I feel like if I walk around all day constantly monitoring when my stomach feels slightly more or slightly less queasy, however, I can catch any change in momentum before getting sick and have ample time to get home, get medicated and get ready for the sickness...which has yet to show up in the way I've imagined it will. I've prepared myself for war (bent over the toilet, dry heaving and drained of energy) and all I've gotten so far is someone TP'ing my house (feeling slightly nauseous and having to go to bed at 9 p.m.).
I'm quickly adapting to "a new normal." I'm developing new standards for how I should feel on a day-to-day basis, I'm changing my minimum requirements for how much sleep I should get and I'm finally starting to let myself worry slightly less about how my body feels every 5 seconds ("Did my stomach just gurgle a bit? Should I eat some pudding?"). Hopefully these changes will help the next 8 weeks fly by faster than this first week. If not, my body is going to freak me out so much over the next 3 months that I'll either be crazy or have super-human abilities by the time this is over ("Wait...did you hear that? My blood pressure went down slightly. Give me half a piece of toast, I need to get that back to normal.")
No comments:
Post a Comment