Jack Sprat and Me

Let me just start out by saying that I don't ever plan on figuring out how to spell Taxol, the new chemo in my cocktail Monday last. In fact, I hope I spelled it wrong. I'd spell it wrong on purpose if I didn't have to do a spellcheck to make sure I spelled it wrong. So, if you know how to spell it, please don't spoil it for me by commenting me and besmirching my blog with a proper spelling of that darn word.

Here's how much I don't like Taxol: If I were to say to you, "Taxol is kicking my ass." Which I would hate to do, because I don't really feel like offending people on my blog, who might feel that the last word in that sentence is the dirty one, when, in fact, the first one is the one that I have been thinking of calling the T-word.

I wouldn't even lay down the T-word with the X falling on a triple letter square in Scrabble if you paid me. That's how much I don't like Taxol.

I had heard about the side effect of numbness/tingling in the digits. But mostly I was concentrating on the statistics I had heard, that 80% of patients find it to be an easier ride than the Adrymiacin/Cytoxin of my first flight of chemo cocktail. My fingertips are not shocked, just a little numb, to find out that I'm outside the box on the statistics.

What I hadn't heard about Taxol, until my oncologist mentioned it to me that day, was that it might make me achy, like the white blood cell shot makes some achy. I could've done the math and figured that meant achy on top of achy, if I didn't have chemo brain; but really it ended up feeling like achy squared.

We did have a quiet but lovely Thanksgiving. Amanda and I were able to make the best turkey ever for the third year in a row. Some of my tennis buds flanked it with side dishes. My mum was there.

Shortly after, I just started to feel myself go downhill and went up for a nap to try and sleep it off. But the achy was just setting in. By Friday I was having a hard time coping with it. Friday was the hardest day I've ever lived through. It is the first time I've wondered if I am strong enough to do this.

Saturday morning I awoke to find out that my friend, Linda, who I had asked y'all to pray for when you pray for me, had gone to be with God, finishing her fight with cancer by kicking it in its you-know-what once and for eternity. But I will miss you.

To compound things, Dave had been having stomach issues that had him doubled over in pain much of the weekend. He thought it was just indigestion or something that would just "pass", although I did see that he had been Googling appendicitis in the wee hours one night. I thought maybe he had developed a stomach ulcer; the guy has a bit of stress on his plate. By Sunday night, the kids and I decided that enough was enough and Matt took him to a doc in the box, which ended up sending him to the ER to run diagnostic tests on him all night long.

Gallstones. He came home at 6 a.m. with 3 RX's, an upcoming surgery that we need to schedule somewhere in the chemo mix, and a new diet in the meantime.

Yes, we've now reverted to nursery rhyme status and humor. Dave is Jack Sprat who can eat no fat. And I'm the one with the weight, the heart rate, and the temperature all the same number, who used to be a vegetarian, but now spends her days trying to beef up for the next chemo cocktail.

Cheers,
Joules