Day 5, Round 1, Chemotherapy
This can't be happening.
I awake expecting to feel worse than yesterday, and instead I'm jumping out of my skin with joy to be feeling great and can't wait to get down the beach and into the water on a day with temperatures forecast to be over 40 degrees.
Quick dash to gather the vitals for a morning by the sea (well my vitals!) - coffee, fresh fruit salad, hat, goggles, sun screen, smh.
It's another perfect summer day. I swim. I catch up with friends. People I know - both close and acquaintances - are blown away to see me. Let alone looking and feeling totally "normal".
It can't last. I know that. But right now, if that's what life wants me to feel, I'm going with it.
I can recall joking with my Mum and husband in the earliest stages of this dastardly journey, that at last my too generous butt would come in for a useful purpose, sustaining me through the chemo I assumed would follow surgery, when I could not eat and would lose weight.
So not happening. Two kilos on since Friday. And it's not because the calorie count is higher than it should be. I am craving and eating really healthy food. This morning I was ravenous and polished off a cafe breaksfast with friends of corn fritters with the works, and through in some sides as a bonus. Ridiculous. But I never eat like this. But it's what my body was demanding. So I made it brunch. And dinner has been a salad with nothing but beautiful and lovely produce and all things good and healthy. I should be whittling away, but no, typically for me I've landed into the 20 per cent who put weight on with chemo. And lest anyone is wondering, it's not vanity talking here, weight loss as soon as I can, as healthy as I can. is high on my list of priorities because of it's link to an increased risk of recurrence and I want to do what I can that is in my power to reduce that risk.
The only other side effects I can report today were awaking with a very white and furry tongue (yuck), and obsessive temperature taking on a day of 40 plus degree heat.
As I've said...this golden run can't continue...and I am being very vigiliant about my temperature, avoiding peole who are sick or have colds. shopping centres, planes (I wish, that's just fantasy), etc etc.
Oh...and today I was positively hyper at times...like I'd had a few too many shots of espresso which I hadn't. Has anyone else felt like this?
Right now I am reclining on the couch, watching the ABC news thinking must stop typing because cannot stand the heat of it any longer.
A little later this evening, before the southerly hits, I imagine my husband and I will be back in the ocean for another lazy dip.
And I wiill float and work my way through that water and marvel at the gift of the last few days at the start of a treatment I know will knock me for six, because that's what it has to do to work.
A girlfriend who foiught breast cancer two years ago described her chemo experience -- whhich was not pleasant - as doable. I know now what she means. It is. I'm doing it. Right now. And it's doable. What remains unanswered is how doable will I feel it is when it starts to hit in unpleasant ways. Which it surely must. I can but ponder.
Hope everyone has stayed cool, safe and strong today.
x
