February 18, 2013
Well campers, its been an interesting weekend to say the least. It's funny, when you go into the whole chemo process, you're going to get a different answer from everyone as to how this will effect you. We've heard that if she loses her hair, it will be on the 17th day. Or 2-3 weeks. or maybe not. We've heard that she will get nauseous. Or not. We've heard that she will get aches and pains and weird stuff. Then we heard that she won't. Ya just get to the point where you sort of stop listening to all of it. I'm not trying to trash anyone, its just that everyone seems to have a different answer so its hard to feel confident as to how exactly this is all gonna go down.
So - in our case, this is what the last 4 days have looked like. Friday, she slept all day. Done. No, seriously...she was soooo stinkin tired and weirded out from 'Roids and Benadryl. She was a little bit nauseous Thursday night into Friday and then by Friday evening the nausea was pretty bad. She spent most of her time trying to get ginger tea, toast, applesauce and such down the gullet and was successful in the sense that the nausea never got bad enough for her to blow chunks. I mean, vomit...sorry.
Saturday was a lesser version of the same - nauseous, tired, a little weird. Saturday she did start getting a weird pain in her knees; she compared it to Restless Leg Syndrome only with pain. It started in the knees and by Sunday evening it had expanded to ankles, hips, leg muscles etc. We walked on Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon and after Sunday's walk she said she was pretty done with the whole walking thing. It was pretty bad. Friday and Saturday nights were pretty decent nights of sleep for her, but then last night (Sunday) was awful. She woke up 3-4 times because of her legs and her expanders as well. Oh, I forgot to mention that she had her expanders filled again on Thursday morning just before chemo, so that was the insult to her injury. She's had to sleep on her back for 3 months now, which is not ideal.
Its been interesting couple of days to say the least. She has been fairly miserable. I don't think that is too strong a word, its really been tough. I think part of the problem is the emotional piece of all of this; the knowledge that she will probably lose her hair in a matter of weeks, the stress of putting those kinds of drugs into her body, (especially for someone like her who tries not to take too much IB-Profen) the stress of work and trying to balance that with time off and rest...its really tough.
She did say something really sweet and powerful to me on Saturday afternoon though - we had met a few people in the infusion center (the mother of a 33 year-old who has Hodgkins Lymphoma, the mother of a mother of 4 with stage 4 breast cancer) and she realized that as much as this flat out sucks, she realized that she and we can do this. It was just a sweet conversation to have with her when she realized the blessing that our situation is and that she's going to be fine. She's really going to be fine. We pray the same for the other two women we met.
Thanks for checking in gang and thanks for reading. We need you to pray for sleep and for relief from this leg/joint pain thing, its pretty awful for her. It stinks because its cumulative in the sense that she needs rest to help her body recover and heal but she can't sleep, so her body can't rest, which makes it just compound on top of itself.
Thanks for loving on her, one down, 3 to go!
Jeydrienne
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