Very tired today

Well, as mom said I went through round 3 of chemo last week so my regular chemo is half way done. I’m finding going through these rounds of chemo and the constant battle with nausea is such a mental game. It’s one thing to have nausea and another game altogether to know I will have to fight it and not psych myself into making it worse. It doesn’t help that I’m trying so hard not to lose weight (even to gain some if I can) and even this week when I’m not as nauseous I hardly have an appetite. Not long after I got out of the hospital and was having trouble eating a friend of mine suggested I set a daily calorie goal of 2000 and that is really hard to reach chemo week and the week after (week 3 when I’m feeling good it’s not so bad).

Mom and I will be going to the hospital for a number of tests tomorrow, mostly related to making sure I’ll be healthy enough to go through the high-dose chemotherapy. I’ll probably be quite tired tomorrow as my immune system will not be recovered until probably after the weekend. The tests include a cat scan of my abdomen that will help the doctors determine if the chemo is being effective. There’s really no blood test to show for sure if the cancer is sticking around or not, although it did cause high calcium levels in my bloodstream so monitoring that is the best indicator (and my levels have been on the low side of normal since my surgery). Another test will be blood tests, including my weekly blood counts and I’m not really sure what else. The last test will be a heart echo to see how strong my heart is. If you remember the picture of the red chemotherapy from one of my first blogs, that chemo can cause heart damage so they need to make sure my heart is still ok.

We’re planning on traveling next week to visit my aunt and uncle for Thanksgiving. Anna will be there too and it will be so great to see her again. We’ll probably leave Tuesday or Wednesday and I’m not sure when we’ll be back but we need to be here by Monday for my port placement for the bone marrow extraction which will happen after the next round of chemo. So much is happening! On one hand I’m glad there’s a lot to keep me busy but on the other hand it feels very overwhelming. I’m so tired of being sick, and I’m so tired of the unknown. As time goes on the doctors seem to be getting more and more positive. But they’ve told us from the beginning that this is an easier type of cancer to get into remission but it’s also more likely to reoccur. So what if we get it in remission? What does that really mean? To me that doesn’t mean I’m cured, it still means it could come back. But this is probably mostly my physical exhaustion talking. It’s easier to keep a positive attitude when I’m feeling better.