Post # 44- It's Been Too Long But Chemo Kicked My Butt

So it's been a minute. Chemo, chemo, chemo. What more can I say, lol... I knew it was not going to be a walk in the park on a sunny day. It was more like a getting robbed during a cold winters day in the middle of most desolate place in Alaska. With that I mean you can have all the comfort in the world but when you get ice cold chills on the outside of your skin and your flesh seems to burn up at the same time while your bones appear to be being twisted by some unknown force, it's like you are in this world alone. That's when the only person you can call on is GOD and Percocet becomes your best friend.

I hate taking medicine so I would tough it out until the pain got excruciating. My reasoning and I still stand by it and will handle it the same way for my next chemo cycles, is that, I am already taking so much medicine, the chemo is killing cancer cells and healthy cells so the last thing I need to do is add one more medicine. So I only take my pain medicine when it is extremely necessary. Believe me I took a few Percocets last week.

Side effects that I experienced last week, nausea, dry mouth, extremely wet mouth, dry throat, rash, mouth sores, chronic painful constipation (that's a separate post), ice cold chills, hot burning flesh, excruciating headaches that would precede the bone aches, bouts of sudden onset fatigue, a little depression, sore throat, slight blood in my stool (when I did finally move my bowels it wouldn't stop, 15 times on Monday!!), heightened smell and loss of taste. All this since 12/22/2008. These side effects were a cumulative effect from the chemo then and the Neulasta shot I got on 12/23 to bring my white blood cell count up from the chemo.

Monday 12/29/08 I went in for my weekly Herceptin infusion. Remember I get an 1 1/2 hour infusion of Herceptin for 12 weeks straight, then every three weeks for 1 year. That went well and my white blood cell count was good. My red blood cell count was low but it always is and it wasn't extremely low. I haven't had any chest pains or shortness of breath from Herceptin so far so I am happy about that.

January 1, 2009, I feel a lot better. When I woke up, I thanked GOD because I didn't know if I would make it to 2009 for more reasons than just cancer. So to wake up to a beautiful, bright sunny day felt so good. My bedroom faces east so I get the first morning sun rays. I have some bone pain now but it's not worth taking a Percocet over yet. I still have my hair, eyebrows, eyelashes etc.. they haven't come out yet. Maybe I'll be that exception, lol.. If I am, I will be soooooooooooooooooooooooooo mad because I cut all my hair off shortly after I found out I had cancer during a fit so if I did that for no reason, lol.. Plus I want my good hair :)! I am going to try to do a little exercising today. I'll let you know how that works out, lol.