Cancer Post #3- What Chemo is Really Like

With all my cancer posts, I hesitate to write about this topic because as anyone who has had cancer will tell you, the stories are all very specific and different.  I polled a small audience of cancer survivors beforehand on what to expect and got varying responses before experiencing it for myself.  No two experiences are alike.  In the last 4 months I have heard countless times from Doctors and Nurses that “Everyone’s body reacts differently.”  They are as right as rain. 

So, this is my story, my experience.  Some of the details are too personal and disturbing to share and some days I can’t decide if chemo is more difficult to bear physically or mentally.  It is the combo of both on so many levels that it makes it a beast. 

I definitely started off the chemo process on the wrong foot.  The combo of side effects I had were unbearable.  When I finally realized this was not what it was supposed to be like and went in for IV fluids, my Dr told me she had never seen it hit someone so hard with all the side effects I had.  Lucky me.  

If you are anything like me, I had the Hollywood version of chemo in my head so I wasn’t shocked that I was down 10 lbs after my first chemo.  What I was shocked by were all the big and little side effects that aren’t really talked about.  The constant bloody noses, the fact that you are exhausted but sleep won’t come, the way your hair and head actually hurt from hair loss for months.  I had the added bonus of “being burned from the inside out” so blisters covered my head, face, lips, inside my mouth, and down my neck.  I felt a bit like Job and begged God to just take my life in some of those moments.

After round 1 almost killed me I was switched to a new drug that has been administered weekly in smaller doses.  It has been so-much-kinder but also is certainly not free of it’s own side effects.  They are just a bit more manageable so luckily, I won’t be 100 lbs lighter when this is all said and done.

The chemo “fatigue” you hear about has been no joke for me either.  I am a shell of myself.  My 3 mile runs have turned into willing myself to walk a mile or two a day, knowing that choice means I will have nothing left to give my family the rest of the day.  I sit and stare at my family through dinner.  (although, if you have ever eaten dinner with our 3 middle school children, you know you can’t get a word in edge-wise right now anyway!).  I no longer climb the stairs at night to tuck my kids in and most days I don’t see them off to school anymore either.  For an active, once healthy person the low-energy level is its own personal hell.  I am sure I skipped 40 and went straight to 90.  

The emotional and mental effect chemo can have on a person is more than I could have imagined.  I have cried everyday since September 1st.  If you get a smile out of me, it’s 100% fake.  (Which I do whip out every now and again for my kid’s sake) Every moment feels like an eternity of waiting and wondering.  I have truly wondered if I’ll ever be put back together again or if I will get to grow old.  The grief and anger that comes along with all of this has been fierce.  I am pretty sure I have sworn more in the last 4 months than Ruth on the Netflix series Ozark. 

Watching this affect my family has been so hard too.  My husband’s schedule has been turned upside down as he sits for hours and hours and hours with me in hospital rooms and through the hard middle of the night moments.  He has been watching his wife disappear before his eyes.  My kids are involved in the bare minimum to try and “protect Mom” and the pile of vitamins they now take would impress just about anyone.  The other day, they were putting a picture puzzle of our family together and we found them crying.  They decided to take out my face because #1- I don’t look like that anymore. #2- What if I die?  No middle school kid should have to ask those sorts of questions as they are trying to figure out who they are.  

So that has been chemo in a nutshell.  I have 2 more treatments left which means 3 more weeks of misery.  Then surgeries, and other hard things, but I suspect for me, chemo will have been the worst.  I hate the thought of destroying my body to gain life.  If this comes back, you will likely find me at a hippy treatment center on a beach in Mexico somewhere because I won’t be doing this again.  (and also perhaps a bit more happy courtesy of the medical marijuana that I suspect would be involved.) 

At this point in my post, if you are waiting for the Jesus loving, use-to-be missionary, Pastor’s wife side to come out and say something Spiritual, this will simply have to do.  This has been my life these past 4 months and that’s not to say the presence of God hasn’t been in it.  I won’t pretend like there isn’t constant grief, but instead of taking me out of that grief, I am learning that He BEARS it WITH me instead sometimes.  It has been more of a “Be still my Soul” sort of experience so far than an “It is Well with my Soul” experience, but, I am believing over time, that second part will come too.  

Thanks for all the prayers, encouragement, meals, care packages, financial gifts, and love you have shown our family through this leg of a long and unexpected journey.  You have been a light.