Today is Friday. I didn’t have Physical Therapy or Massage Therapy this morning, so I slept in.\u00c2\u00a0 Until Noon.\u00c2\u00a0 And I’m still sleepy, but I have to get myself ready for chemo.<\/p>\n
Yesterday was the day I got tired<\/p>\n
To quote the literature<\/a> the side effects for the first and\/or second week are “Flu-like syndrome, consisting of fever, chills, malaise and myalgias… This is usually dose-related and appears early in therapy.”\u00c2\u00a0 Been there, done that.\u00c2\u00a0 My fever is down, my chills are going away, i’m still a little achy.\u00c2\u00a0 But now I’m tired.\u00c2\u00a0 Really tired.<\/p>\n Again, the literature: “Unlike fever, fatigue does not decrease over time; in fact, it may persist and even intensify as therapy continues. Physical or mental fatigue accompanied by cognitive deficits may occur. Other long-term concerns for patients receiving interferon therapy are fatigue, confusion and depression. This fatigue may be dose limiting and is actually very difficult to manage. Because the peak action of the drug occurs 3\u00e2\u20ac\u201c12 hours following administration and its half-life is two hours, the patient should be advised to take the drug in the evening. Patients should also be instructed to pace their activities.”<\/p>\n The nurses, and Bob (the guy from day two) kept saying two things: drink more water, and get more exercise.\u00c2\u00a0 The more I exercise the more I energy I have.\u00c2\u00a0 And obviously, the converse applies too.\u00c2\u00a0 This make sense, though is easier said than done.<\/p>\n I spent most of yesterday sleepwalking.<\/p>\n I went for massage, which was wonderful, and relaxing.\u00c2\u00a0 So relaxing I fell asleep on the massage table.\u00c2\u00a0 I have never done that before.\u00c2\u00a0 I left there somewhere inbetween a trance and asleep on my feet.\u00c2\u00a0 I came home and checked my email. Closed my computer, and then fell asleep in a fetal position with my face on top of it. The laptop was still warm, and I guess that was comforting, or at least made me want to sleep.\u00c2\u00a0 And I fell asleep in the chemo chair.\u00c2\u00a0 I put on “Good Night… Music to Sleep by<\/a>” that O had uploaded for me. I pulled out the leg rest, pushed back the seat back, and immediately fell asleep.\u00c2\u00a0 I woke up right as the Interferon infusion was finishing.<\/p>\n I went to the bathroom with the IV pole.\u00c2\u00a0 That was kind of weird.\u00c2\u00a0 But I got tripped up by all the long tubes, and stepped on one.\u00c2\u00a0 When I came out I noticed that there was blood running up the tubes for three feet.\u00c2\u00a0 I was kind of amazed, but I didn’t panic.\u00c2\u00a0 I just waived for my nurse Laurie, and she came and helped me back to my chair, and flushed it out of the tubes.\u00c2\u00a0 The interferon had just finished a couple of minutes earlier; my timing was perfect.\u00c2\u00a0 And Laurie was able to save the IV too.<\/p>\n When I got home, all I wanted to do was sleep. My dad dragged me out for a walk.\u00c2\u00a0 I knew it was the right thing to do, but I didn’t want to do it.\u00c2\u00a0 I went anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 I was really slow.\u00c2\u00a0 It did feel good, though.\u00c2\u00a0 He started in on this lecture about how I needed to exercise to get more energy, etc.\u00c2\u00a0 I cut him off.\u00c2\u00a0 I told him to stop lecturing.\u00c2\u00a0 I told him I knew he was right, but that I couldn’t deal with the lecturing.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess it was also that it seemed like such a clear sign that I was really in deep, which scared me.\u00c2\u00a0 And also that I had already been home too long b\/c my parents were lecturing to me.<\/p>\n When I came back from the walk KT came over and we watched a movie.\u00c2\u00a0 He brought me a jar of origami cranes from his family.\u00c2\u00a0 It was really touching.\u00c2\u00a0 I have folded them before for people who were sick.\u00c2\u00a0 But never been given them.\u00c2\u00a0 While its not exactly a first that I had ever hoped<\/em> for, considering I am already sick I am very glad to have the cranes.<\/p>\n We walked a mile last night.\u00c2\u00a0 Today when I woke up my calves ached worse than they have ached in memory.\u00c2\u00a0 It feels like I ran 10 miles hard.<\/p>\n My doctor pushed back the chemo treatment by two weeks becuase the incisions from the previous surgeries were not healing on schedule.\u00c2\u00a0 Apprently Interferon stops or slows all other normal healing processes.\u00c2\u00a0 In order to heal one part of my body another part has to suffer.<\/p>\n And yet, in order to keep my energy up, I have to keep walking.<\/p>\n Which one’s gonna give first?<\/p>\n Today was also the day I stopped being able to reply to all of my email.<\/p>\n Off to Chemo.\u00c2\u00a0 I get my IV out today, and a weekend break.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today is Friday. I didn’t have Physical Therapy or Massage Therapy this morning, so I slept in.\u00c2\u00a0 Until Noon.\u00c2\u00a0 And I’m still sleepy, but I have to get myself ready for chemo. Yesterday was the day I got tired To quote the literature the side effects for the first and\/or second week are “Flu-like syndrome, … Continue reading Chemo Day 4<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10,28,13,15,29],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-update","tag-chemo","tag-iv","tag-side-effects","tag-sleep","tag-tired"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melanarrative.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}