Just the Facts

Hi all. Jim and I realized that we haven’t sent out an update in quite a while. There have been a few changes to my situation since the last one. First and foremost is that fact that we originally said that I didn’t really have many side effects with the current chemo regimen. Perhaps we jinxed it when we wrote that… Not long after we sent out that little nugget, it got hit with pretty bad fatigue. It’s daily, and some days are even worse than others. 

Fatigue, for the uninitiated, is not just a sense of tired. In my experience, it’s a full-body phenomenon. When the fatigue “hits” me, it’s like all of my muscles hit a wall and just have zero energy to give. I can be having a fairly decent morning, but when the fatigue comes, everything grinds to a halt. All I can do is sleep at that point. Some days, the fatigue waits until 11:00 am or so to kick in. Then I spend several hours asleep, or at the least, lying down because I can’t do anything else. Other days, I get so far as pouring a cup of coffee and the next thing I know, I’m walking up with coffee spilled all over myself…with no prior warning that the fatigue is coming. The rest of those days is usually spent in bed. 

As you can imagine, it’s nearly impossible to accomplish much due to the fatigue. The doctors have placed me on medical leave from work until the first week of October. We are actually going to revisit that return date soon. If the fatigue is still there, it will be hard to teach. Of course, there’s also the issue of me driving safely to and from work when I am so fatigued. So, for now, I am staying home. I’m not sure what will happen in October, but realistically, I will probably not be ready to return since the fatigue isn’t improving. 

I’ve also been dealing with quite a bit of nausea and dizziness. All of these are known side effects of my chemo, so it isn’t shocking that I’m experiencing them. I struggled to wrap my mind around all of the side effects because they didn’t begin right away. I had been on the current chemotherapy for a month before any of them became severe. 

The big question that I’m sure we are all asking is: does the chemo work? I have scans scheduled for the last week of September. If those show that the tumors are stable or shrinking, I will remain on the current chemotherapy. If there is tumor growth, the medical team may switch to the next chemo in their arsenal. As we understand it, what I am currently on is one of the friendlier chemos with the more easily tolerated side effects. If my current fatigue, dizziness and nausea are an indication of tolerable side effects, I hope I don’t have to find out what other chemos have to offer!! 

For now, I am just concentrating on one day at a time. One of the biggest struggles for me is fighting a feeling of uselessness. Normally I would be working during the day. I had a rough time, emotionally, when I didn’t return to work for the new school year. Thankfully, I have a fantastic counselor at Stanford who helped me see that I need to focus on rest and healing in order to return to work and be fully present for my students. You all know that I usually stink at “waiting” and “resting” though. To combat that, and still work within what the fatigue allows, I set a daily goal. Nothing earth shattering, some days it’s as simple as washing one load of laundry, but setting and completing the goal helps my mental health a lot.