ho hum chemo

Hello everyone

Well Chemo is clearly becoming ....ho hum....predictable.

Today is the day to have nausea, today is the day to be constipated, or...today is the day to have heartburn, or today is the day to have achey bones, or today is the day to have sores in my mouth, or today is the day for my hair to fall out. (actually today IS the day that my hair is supposed to fall out, but we will see)

It is so much better knowing what to expect, and with each symptom to be able to say "OK I have this now, and I know it will likely last about .....number of days.  The other thing that is better is that with chemo before, I was never really sure if what I was feeling was the cancer spreading or something like that.  During the break from chemo everything went away and came back once I started up again, so I know this time around it is just the chemo and it will go away.

People associate chemo with weight loss, well not so with me. I thought at the beginning, if I am to have cancer, at least I can be thin.....not!  Through all the nausea of chemo and then 5 weeks of nausea with radiation, I tend to have a poor appetite, but when I eat I will think, now that tasted good and I will overeat and then feel nauseated again.  Somehow through all of this I have yet to learn to moderate my eating, hence I am pretty much the same weight as I started, which is really fine with me.

Over the past several months, I have found that I tend to build my whole day around what I am making for dinner. I love to cook, and I love to plan. Even on the really bad days psychologically and physically, this little ritual seems to distract me, and over time it has given me a sense of

"doing something" when it seemed there was nothing I could do about this cancer. I feel so accomplished when we sit down to eat and I can list all the "items" with in dinner that have been shown to have anti cancer properties.  I have done this even on days when I am really nauseated, and know I will not be able to eat much.  Some days I can get everything ready but the cooking of it makes me nauseated, so Ken cooks it. Odd??

When I was really depressed, I found that cooking dinner was something that did not involve the past, or the future, and at that time I needed things like that to do.

I was thinking the other day about the fact that I was having chemo on my birthday and thought that it is chemo that is giving me the chance to have many more birthdays, so why not have it on my birthday, heck I think I might just make a turmeric birthday cake.

love and peace

Janet Bates

jankenb @ gmail.com