Sharing too much

I've got some Thoughts for y'all tomorrow on what chemo is like and how much fun it is to have cytotoxins eat your nerve cells.

It's late, and I'm too tired to write anything (besides, it hurts to type...yes...it's called chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy and it's great fun) but I thought I would take a moment tonight to frankly ask for prayers.

I'm not actually doing too terribly well, and have been told that the second round, set to start July 18, is going to be worse than the first. The nerve damage has made things difficult in ways I didn't expect, and it takes months for nerves to heal, if they are going to do so at all. So with only three weeks in between doses of poison there isn't enough time for the nerves to re-grow and the damage is going to be compounded. It means a lot of pain, difficulty walking and falls. Which in turn means a lot of lying around at home unable to move.

For the first week, they gave me the wrong kind of painkillers so it wasn't much fun. I've got better pain medication now, but it is a lot stronger and is leaving me pretty addled, so it's a bit difficult constructing sentences. (I'm fine with that last part, actually. Thinking too much has been one of the biggest fun-killers of my whole life, so it's a relief to have an excuse not to do it at all for a while.)

My Evil Brain is also getting in on the act; seeing I'm weak and taking this opportunity to attack, the monster that lives between my ears and spends all its leisure time trying to figure out how to kill me, has started whispering all manner of horrible things to me. Your brain is not your friend. Don't forget it.

Truthfully, I don't remember ever being this ill and helpless. It's annoying. And boring. And painful. And frightening. And lonely.

And since going into the hospital, I was thinking, "Well, at least I can get to the Gardone conference," but as it turns out, even though I am out of the hospital, I'm so flattened that I can't get to the end of the block, never mind getting on a train to the top of the Boot. It's killing me that I'm lying around at home while all these cool friends of mine are here, having fun without me.

And just to add to the press, all of this is turning out to be very hard on the people who are trying to help me.

So, not much fun around here, I'm afraid. But praying helps, so I'm told, and at the moment, I'm not really up to doing it myself. So...



HJW