Very Bad Days

I think I'm related to the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. You know the one. When she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid. :) Well when I feel very very good, I'm too busy to blog. When I feel very very bad, I'm too sick to think well enough to blog. So I have to be in-between in order to be able to reflect and have the time to write.

It's 3:30 a.m. I'm not feeling very, very bad, just achey and sleepless. So....time to catch up!

Beginning today:
I went for my second session of Chemotherapy, but my white blood cells were too low. So instead they gave me two shots (The red has been low for some time) and sent me home again. But...I think because the red cells are actually up a bit, the white doesn't affect my energy...so I felt pretty good today.

Thankfully, I felt good because I'm shedding like a shaggy dog. I didn't notice until I washed my hair this morning. My hair isn't coming out in handfuls, more just little bunches of 5-10 hairs at a time (No! I didn't stop to count. That's a guestimate!) I had braced myself for chemotherapy today and believed that the hair loss would probably start a few days later, since there was no noticable effect after the first session. I was guessing 5-7 days after the second. Well...mine is going two weeks after the first. I thought I might have a Hallelujah breakdown...but I didn't. I just decided that the loose hair in my face was annoying, so I got a very short haircut. It gives me a different look which I wouldn't choose, but it's okay.

My computer has chosen this moment to go on the fritz, so the pictures I planned to download with my new hairdo are stuck in my hard drive at the moment. (I'm on a borrowed computer.)

Yesterday I went for my second chemotherapy appointment, but couldn't have it because my counts were too low. So today, tomorrow and Friday I get a shot to build up my white blood cells and then we try again on Monday. The only difficulty with that shot is that it makes my bones ache -- like the flu. Interesting isn't it that stimulating bone marrow to produce makes the bones ache. Is that what makes one ache so much with a virus -- the bone marrow is overactive?

Since I haven't written for over a week, I'll go back to the aftermath of the first chemotherapy session. After being sick as a dog (Hmmm shedding like a dog, sick as a dog...is there a theme to these metaphors?) for those three or four days, Bob called the massage therapist who has helped me before. She said that I might be reacting to dehydration and "prescribed" Gatorade. Voila'! Two days and countless bottles of water, Gatorade and even Propel, I felt much better. I do so have to watch hydration. I need to drink about a gallon of water a day -- yes! 128 ounces!! That's a lot of liquid, especially since coffee doesn't count! Although when I'm so nauseous, coffee doesn't taste good. I still like the IDEA of coffee, but the liquid itself doesn't go down well.

So after re-hydrating, I did fairly well for a week. The biggest problem as far as I FEEL, is that I have a constant nagging headache, ready to explode into full-blown migraine. Mostly, I can keep it in check with water or Propel (Propel does have a small amount of sucralose which isn't particularly good, but that's the smallest ingredient...so I'm using it, since watered down Gatorade just doesn't sit well unless I'm really dehydrated)

That takes us up to today -- or actually yesterday at this point -- Wednesday, to be precise. And the low white cells. Skipping Wednesday's chemo does put my schedule off-kilter. Getting back to school can only occur after I have a reasonable white count otherwise every kids with a cold is a deadly weapon to me. Since I see 125 or so kids a day in an enclosed environment, 25 at a time, that's a lot of weaponry aimed at me. So I'll just skip it for now. :)

And that's been my very very good, and very very bad weeks lately!

I'll add pictures whenever my computer decides it will actually begin working again! I've re-started it a couple of times. No luck. I just did the old "unplug the thing" trick. We'll see if that remedies my problem or if my computer is dying of old age. (The silly things have a very short lifespan!)

Pastor Phylis