I'm in bed and I'm cold, cuddling the hot water bottle I
made to soothe my muscles aches and the spasms in my joints. The next moment, heat creeps across my scalp
and I'm pulling off my night cap (very unflattering but bald heads do get jolly
cold) and throwing off the duvet, expelling the hot water bottle from the
bed. The heat radiates down my body and dissipates:
hot flash over, I'm freezing again. My
night cap has vanished and my hot water bottle is sulking under the bed and the
duvet resists my feeble tug.
No wonder I'm tired in the mornings.
Tired, achy all over, numb at the tops of my fingers and
worrying about the brownness of my nails (but no flaking yet) and itchy in
places I really don't want to describe in detail. And so, so very glad that it's nearly all
over.
My doctor is glad too: my white blood cells are low yet
again this despite my post-Neupogen peak last week. My bone marrow is 'sensitive', apparently and
she doesn't think I could do much more.
But I got the green light for the eighth of my nine weekly Taxol today so
next week will the last....if my white blood cells hold up.
On a more positive note though, I had imagined that I might
be languishing in bed by this stage of chemo and I am most definitely not that
bad. We had to stay home this Christmas
due to the weekly treatments but we've still been out and about on day trips
and I've coped fine - with a more restful day in between anyway. My appetite is positively good now (unlike on
FEC) so I've enjoyed all the festive fare, though a weekly weighing does have
the disadvantage that I now know exactly how much I put on over Christmas...oops.
Chemo has definitely been tough but nothing like as bad as I
had feared.
So all in all, I might be staggering towards the finish line
- but at least I'm still getting there
on my own two feet.
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