Starting every day with incredible back-ache, stomach ache and a headache is not my idea of fun!
The thing that makes it bearable is the knowledge that the drug appears to we working.
Way too early I know, but when you've had a horrible choking cough for over a year and all of a sudden it's a tenth of what it was, you have to assume it's the Adcetris you took six days ago.
My itch is also milder, possibly due to my body no longer trying to fight the lymphoma with histamines or whatever the mechanism is that makes some Hodgkins Lymphoma sufferers itch. No one seems to have a definitive answer as to why. Anyway, it's greatly reduced and I'm very happy about that.
It's almost 1pm now and I'm only just becoming a functioning person again. I lay in bed this morning groaning about my back pain and unable to find a sweet spot that allowed me any degree of comfort. I was in so much pain (if pain is the right word for a severe dull ache?) that I couldn't even concentrate on watching TV. I've refilled the spa pool overnight and heated it to 38C, I'll get in later in the day once I stop feeling like I do right now. It's a small window of opportunity as I know by about 7pm I'll be in agony again. (OK maybe not agony but bloody uncomfortable!)
Thing is, I can't say for sure that this has anything to do with the chemo. Muscle pain is one documented side effect, so I guess tearing a muscle in my back, which is what I and my Osteopath believe, was never going to be a painless affair. I think I'll let my GP have a look next week too just in case I've done something more serious like crack a vertebrae or something (brittle prednisone affected bones and all)
I recently got some feed back from a reader who said her Doctor recommended she read my blog. Gosh, where would you start? I write this blog for several reasons, one to document my journey so I can lay out a timeline rather than rely on my crappy chemo brain to remember. Then there's the need to keep friends and family informed and another possibly more important is to document my journey so that others with the same or similar illness can get some idea of what to expect.
What I do hope that everyone gets from my blog is the message that having cancer is not always the end of the world, it's a bit of an annoyance that's for sure! but it's also a great motivator. You no longer take anything for granted. I'm convinced it's made me a better person by helping me focus on what and who is important in my life. Then there's the challenges it's thrown at me, all of which I have met.
Everything from shipping my own stem cells around the globe, learning about all aspects of my treatment and to a certain extent just staying alive! ..Something I'm getting quite good at it would appear as I enter the seventh year of battle. I appreciate that many never get the chance to fight the good fight.
However it would be fair to say to that the last seven years have been some of the best I've had and the bad times never seem so bad looking back.
...I'm waffling, ..Till tomorrow, Cheers!
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