The Chemo of Good and Evil.

Chemo...how do I even begin?

I hate this medicine, but love it at the same time.  Fighting my breast cancer is impossible without chemo.  I appreciate what it is doing to my cancer, but I hate it for what it is doing to my body. Chemo is hard.  There is no other way to say it.

I have had two rounds of chemo; both infusions have been difficult.  I had reactions both times to the chemo.  The reaction usually happens within the first ten minutes of starting the infusion.  I get flushed, hot, and then I can't breathe.  It feels like there is an elephant sitting on my chest keeping me from getting air into my lungs, and I am just gasping for air – it happens fast.   The nurses stop the infusion and pump me full of additional medicines to counter the reaction.  After about 45 minutes they start the infusion again. This is also enough time for me to worry “what if I can’t get my chemo?”  I never thought I would literally be “grateful” after receiving chemo, but every time that I've finished a round, I've thought “I’m glad my body could handle it.”  A funny side effect to the chemo is my nose burns.  I feel like I could blow out fire from my nostrils, but once the IV drip is done that side effect is over.  I'm usually tired but get through the rest of the night fine.  Chemo days are long days.  We are usually at Duke for about 10 hours.  I have blood draws in the morning, appointment with my main oncologist, maybe another procedure/appointment, then the infusion takes 4-6 hours.

The next two days are okay because I'm still on so many steroids I don't crash.  But come Day 3 –  I've been hit by a train.  I'm off my steroids, and it's just me and the chemo.  Chemo knocks me out to the next century.  I spend most of the day sleeping, though it's not your typical restful nap.  It feels as if my body weighs a million pounds, and all I can do is lie on the bed without moving because every time I do move it takes too much energy.  I lie motionless, hoping and almost pleading to fall asleep so the exhaustion will escape me for just a brief moment.  The brief moment turns into a 4-5 hour nap, but it only feels like 10 minutes.  My brain tries to wake me up after about an hour of napping telling me "get up, you're sleeping the day away" but my body ignores the voice and continues to sleep and sleep.  It's exhaustion like I've never experienced.  I've never taken a nap to only wake up more tired than when I went to sleep.   After I wake, I am in this fog of “chemo brain.”  Nothing seems clear and it's hard to maintain a thought or even form a sentence.  I look over at the clock and the hours are ticking by, but I haven’t accomplished anything during my day.  My goal is usually to at least get up, take a shower, and get dressed.  I am usually too weak to shower, so I just take a bath.  I have been fortunate that I’m not throwing up, but I am very nauseous.  Food tastes awful and even water taste like metal.  This lasts for about 4-5 days.  I know it’s over – usually on Day 5 or 6 – when I wake up and it doesn't hurt to get out of bed, and water doesn't taste like poison.  Water has never tasted as good to me as that first day of feeling better.  I savor its taste – so pure and clean.  I can feel that first sip coursing throughout the streams of my body, hydrating me after days of deprivation.

My second round of chemo really decided to punch me when I was down.  Friday at 5PM I was hit hard with a headache.  Not a normal headache (the type you take some Advil and it goes away), but a headache to the point my speech was slurred and I was completely incapacitated.  It was the Friday before the long Labor Day weekend and we had to page my oncologist at 6PM.  She is an amazing woman.  She is literally a world renowned oncologist, and I am continually amazed at her humility and gentleness.  She was so apologetic for the fact that I had no other option but to go to the emergency room, and she was genuinely sorry I was in such pain.   So off Lisa and I went to the ER at Duke while Daniel stayed with the kids.  I was depleted, I was just done.  I had suffered all week from the chemo, and this debilitating pain thrown in on top of my already weak body was just too much.

As Lisa and I were driving, I was trying so hard to just not throw up all over the car.  I saw a convertible drive by on the other side of the road full of boys.  They were laughing and the wind was blowing through their hair.  They were loving life and here I was……First I have no hair to blow in the wind, and second I was going to the ER.  How did I get here?  I was supposed to be with my family going on a trip to the beach, camping, or at least at home eating pizza and watching a movie.  Unfortunately, my special Friday night was going to be spent at the Duke ER.  I just wanted to give up.  It hurt to hold my head up, it hurt to talk, it hurt to have my eyes open, I had barely eaten for a week – there was nothing left in me.  It’s like the world slowed down, and I was experiencing my Life in 3^rd person.  Then it hit me, and I was jarred back into reality with my next thought – it’s too early in my journey to even think these thoughts.  I am just starting….in fact, it’s barely begun.

The emergency room at Duke was amazing.  Again, we were met with such compassion and understanding.  The team of doctors and nurses were very thorough and incredibly kind.  They needed to do a CT Scan to make sure the cancer had not spread to my brain.   There were a few minutes where I had to wait to be put into the CT scanner and was just lying on the platform, staring up at the ceiling in my painful existence.  I just sat there, staring up at the ceiling, and I knew that within the next 3 minutes, my Life was going to go one way or the other.  I was going to leave the ER with metastatic breast cancer in my brain or I was going to leave with the diagnosis of “headache/migraine.”  For the first time in this whole journey (waiting for the news to go one way or the other), the results went in my favor.  I left with clean brain scans and a diagnosis of “headache/migraine.”

I know this is just a time in my Life, but honestly, I'm ready to be done with chemo and this whole breast cancer thing.  As soon as those words escape my thoughts, I realize I will never be done with “this breast cancer thing.”  There will be a time when I no longer have cancer in my body, but my health is forever taken away from me.  The day I got diagnosed, my life changed forever.

Chemo Round One

Daniel ready to spring into action at any moment.

Daniel had to spring into action...reaction # one. 

Round Two 

Reaction # two.