Chemo Round 5 Chasing My Waning Optimism

AS FEATURED IN FIG LANCASTER

It is a cold fall morning and I am finally feeling like I have found the elusive Zombie reversing tonic and I have emerged from a foggy altered reality, 6 days later.  My daughter is stretched at my feet watching Madeline for the 6 bazillionth time as I sip hot coffee and I am in heaven. It has not been a fun week.

 I know that with every chemo treatment, the side effects are going to build and the recovery is going to be a wee bit harder.  I expect the zombie-like case of the sleepies (seriously, when is Walking Dead coming back)? But this week has been hard, for one thing I am now LIVING in my UGG boots (which once was my favorite part of fall) because every time my feet get cold, my hands and feet start stinging, like I just stuck them in a pile of snow,  for an hour, and then immediately ran them under hot water.

 This week was simply so much harder than others, it took longer to bounce back to happyville and it attacked my attitude, like a ninja with a napoleon complex.

During the first few rounds, I still made it into work and plowed sleepily through 10 hour days on chemo week.  This week…not so much.  I threw in the towel by mid-day, every day.   When I went for my superman shot, the one that builds my white blood cells so that I am not destroyed by touching the shopping cart at Target, I was benched, again.

Instead of my usual 5 minutes at the Lancaster Cancer Center, followed by a lap through Costco grabbing free samples (don’t judge me…I might actually buy something) and a slice of pizza, I was plopped into a recliner for 2 hours of meds and fluids.

 Here is what I learned;
 I have to drink water, no matter how disgusting room temperature water tastes to me, dehydration is a Beeotch and  water is the king of the world.

 When I feel too tired to move, sometimes it is because I am too tired to move, and I should just go back to bed. Though I do I feel like once I adopt this mantra… normal Monday Mornings are going to be a whole new level of bi-polar, inner monologue, cage match style arguments between snooze buttons.

At some point, I have to learn to put ME first.  I am not good at this, I am a mom and a wife.  Like kazillions of moms across the world know, as a mom you rarely put yourself first.  Unless there is a 75% off boots sale…for a really good boot sale, swim lessons are skipped,  kids are dropped at grandparents and occasionally lies are told.   Lies which clearly do not matter or cause one bit of guilt when you are slowly sliding your foot into chocolate brown alligator…ooh sorry I got lost there for a minute.

 Anyway, it is hard for me to say no, it is hard for me to look at someone and say I cannot handle something because that’s what I do… I handle stuff…like a freaking gladiator.

It is hard for me to skip ballet lessons to sleep.  My heart explodes every time my little  girl slips into that tutu and missing it,  even one time is heartbreaking for me.  It is hard(ish) for me to look at my house and just leave the dishes in the sink and the socks on the floor, while I just sit Zombie like on the sofa.

It is hard for me to let cancer boss me around so much. However this cancer is a bossy asshat,  so for the time being, I am going to try to listen to my body,  I am going to try to actually take the naps when I need them and in the spring I am going to put cancer on a one way bus,  with no air conditioning, back to the hell it came from.

My girl and me catching some late afternoon sun. Sure she is reading a slow cooker cookbook with a .50 cent price tag that she found in the garage sale box but she wanted to read one of Moms books and that is what she chose,  and read quietly, for almost 11 minutes.