Four of six; also six plus two

In entirely different scales.

I finished round four of the planned six chemo infusions this week. Sort of: the side effects other than exhaustion were minimal until today. You’d think by Friday I’d be feeling better instead of worse, but you’d be wrong. Even with a bit of a lapse today, I’m feeling enormously better than I did last round. Frustrating as it was, I think the delay may have helped me recover.

These lovely flowers also contributed to overall health and morale.

Not the snow, the snow did NOTHING good for morale, but it’s long gone, my snowdrops are blooming, and I saw a robin yesterday.

I did sleep with the velocikittenraptors last night, and ended up dreaming of being eaten alive by a telepathic shark that liked to play with its food. They were snuggly when I was awake, at least. Mostly snuggly, with only a few sharp bits.

I’m on a new med, Neulasta, that increases white blood cell production so I shouldn’t have any more delays. Sadly, I don’t think this means I get sushi yet. (Insert pouting here.)

With the week-here, week-there stuff, I should be getting my last treatment the first week of May. Originally I should be just about done right now, but no. Stupid recuperating body.

Which leads me to the “six plus two” bit. It’s six months and two days since I sacrificed chunks of colon and liver in the name of survival. I was going to blog on the actual anniversary, but my current chemo coping strategy involves spending as much time asleep as humanly possible, so I didn’t get to it.

My liver should be about 2/3 grown back. If I were otherwise healthy it would be completely grown back after six months, but chemo interferes with that process. (Even post-chemo livers are less robust, let alone those currently being poisoned.)

Sometime in June we’ll do some more scans to see how everything healed up, and decide when to reverse my ostomy, and if I need additional surgery to fix the fistula that formed due to the abscess and infection I had post-surgery. (Probably. Bah.) But my surgeon assures me that all of those can be “whenever” and will not interfere with my travel plans. (I like my colon surgeon. She’s quite awesome.)

My scar itches horribly whenever it feels like it, usually after I haven’t been moving much and it tightens up (yes, I oil it), and I occasionally have a tiny bit of pain when breathing deeply after sitting for a while. Which all just means don’t sit for very long, which is healthy anyway, but not compatible with chemo weeks. But nothing hurts when the velocikittenraptors stomp all over me, and I am otherwise healthy. Even the iodine-related thyroid problems may be improving, though I had to move my endocrinologist appointment due to all the changes in my chemo schedule, and the first opening is June.

Medical science appears to be doing its thing. I frequently think, though, that people a century or two in the future will look back at this in amazement at the horrible things doctors did to their patients. “They zapped them, and poisoned them, and cut bits out! How barbaric!” Still, best we’ve currently got, and it’s working.