Days +3 thru +8
Days 3 and 4 were chemo days. Tied to my IV pole for 48 straight hours. I couldn’t even convince the nurse to disconnect me long enough to take a shower. So we covered the IV pole and I took it into the shower with me. Not exactly what I had in mind, but it worked.
Days 5 and 6 were fucking awful. Nausea and upset stomach was my gift from the chemo. And it was the gift that just kept on giving. So the nausea meds they gave me, lit me up like your annoying neighbor’s Christmas decorations. Poorly chosen and over done. Well, I can’t say poorly chosen, they were making the best decisions they thought at the time. I’ll do my best to try and describe the weirdest feeling I’ve ever experienced.
I was jittery. But not like good caffeine jittery. Like you’ve over done it and there’s is no end to the annoying feeling that you’re going to crawl out of your own skin. I walked. I paced. I rode the bike. I walked outside. I did a band workout. I couldn’t concentrate on reading or writing. All I could do was just move and watch the clock. Watching tv was excruciatingly slow. I couldn’t play video games. All I wanted was for the feeling to end and watching the clock wasn’t making it go away any faster. So you can only imagine how fun sleeping was, or wasn’t based on your definition of being in bed and having crushing anxiety about anything. To sum it up, I was horribly miserable. This lasted the better part of 48 hours. After talking to the doctors, we got me off the meds, rerouted my nausea meds and it finally started to clear up. I’d rather deal with nausea than that. It was unbearable.
Days 7 and 8
I downloaded and played Metroid Dread for most of Day 7. That’s it. The meds were still working themselves out and I didn’t feel great. Nausea was coming back but was tolerable with new meds without the skin crawling jitteriness.
Day 8 has been better. I can create a coherent thought and actually put it down on paper or in a blog post. I’m tired from lack of sleep. Napping has been hit or miss but I’m at least not feeling like crap 24/7.
I’ll get back to regular posting on IG and here soon. But it’s just rest and hopefully getting the rest of the meds out of my system so I feel like a normal human being (or something resembling one as much as going through all this will let me).