Milestone
It may not be a big step but it gives me a marker to keep moving, I finished my first cycle of three chemo treatments today in Little Rock. I have 5 more cycles of three, but I'm getting there!
This last week was really difficult, I had shortness of breath, major acid reflux, heartburn, numbness and  tingling in my hands and feet, my new knees were throbbing so badly, they wouldn't hold me up very well. All of these side effects are bad but one of the worst is the fuzzy mouth, it is like having twenty cotton balls in your mouth while chewing on a piece of tin foil. It doesn't matter what you try to eat, the food or liquid goes in, slams on the brakes and says"Nope, not going any further", so eating has been somewhat tricky and I've lost 6 lbs. this week. One of the other side effects is the belching with the hearburn. When you burp all day long, your chest begins to hurt and it exhausts you. I think I now have some medicine to help with that, we'll see at 2:30 tomorrow morning, when I trying to stifle the urps, so that I don't wake up Tim, although he IS a pretty sound sleeper.
Lastly and I truly understand if the gentlemen reading this blog would rather not hear the next part, jump down to the last paragraph and catch up there. But for the women, when you are in the throes of chemotherapy, one of the toughest side effects is constipation. You have to take stool softeners daily, if you fudge just once, YOU WILL PAY FOR IT! So you sit on the porcelain deity hoping for something and then your body starts a little tightening, a little slide, and low and behold you give birth to a bouncing baby 1 ounce poop. AND that is exactly how it feels, just like labor pains (Believe me ladies, I was proud!) Unfortunately, you tend to also give birth to a 10 ounce hemerrhoid, but hey, its a trade off, because you definately want things moving inside your body, the consequences are too great.
So on the whole I had a good day, I actually ate a hamburger and I finished it, I sang to the Sirius Satellite 50's station all the way home (2 hours, poor Tim) and I have a lopsided smile on this normal but skinny face. God is good and I made it through another day. WOOHOO!