The Aftermath

“Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.” --Bill Cosby

Immediately following my first chemo therapy treatment, I was so surprised to feel perfectly fine, except of course for the pain caused by my port-placement surgery. What I did not expect was how I was going to feel a few days following my first chemotherapy session.

It wasn't hard to sleep, however, thanks to the multitude of anti-nausea drugs I was prescribed. They had the lovely side-effect of drowsiness, which was also given to fight the jittery-ness and insomnia caused by the chemo-infused steroids. Nausea, bone/joint pain (actually more like aching), day-time fatigue (despite the fact that I was sleeping 12+ hours a night sometimes) and the random fluctuation between chills and fever were the only things I had to grapple with. I began to realize that small, frequent meals and bed-side saltines were my best allies. Long soaks in the bathtub helped with the body aches and kept the chills at bay. In all, it felt like I had a bad case of the flu, minus the coughing, sneezing and congestion. I started to feel like a normal person again after day five and was even able to do some light housekeeping in our Idaho townhouse (before leaving for another two months) and finish my Christmas shopping.

I was able to remove the huge bandage that covered the incision site, but I swear, my skin must have fused with the adhesive because that sucker took several hours to remove.
I've decided to resort to home-modified cloth band-aids. Unfortunately, the only one we had in our whole damn house were these camo bandages. At least they make me look bad ass, right?


Of all the shit that cancer can do to you, the one good thing that it does is give you perspective. When I got an obnoxious notice from the WSU libraries about my "missing" (overdue) books, I basically shrugged and had David write them a letter about my circumstances and mailed them my library books. My disease was discovered on November 3rd, so I have been over 300 miles away from my place and unable to get my books until David made a special trip to Idaho for them. They wanted me pay to replace the texts because it had been so long. The letter essentially told them to go screw themselves and that we're not paying the charges (of course, written a little more politely than that!). Normally, a $300.00+ charge on my student account would have me doing back-flips to try to fix the problem, but now my reaction has been to say, "yeah, whatever". Things tend to sort themselves out with just a little effort and a major reduction in stress. That also applies to my treatments too. Even though they scare me a little and I am somewhat nervous, it is easier for me to avoid thinking about it. Some might call it denial, but I call it survival. I guess whatever works, right?