Just to Let You Know, Chemo Sucks.

Just to let you know, chemo sucks.

One cycle down. Two full weeks of chemotherapy (Xeloda, taken orally twice daily) has hit pretty hard. They warn you about “possible side effects…” and then add, “But we don’t really know how any one person will react.” That’s understandable, but Sandy seems to be the iconic case illustrating every last one of them. I won’t excite you with the details, but they include fatigue and nausea (as if she didn’t have enough of that already!), hair loss (it starts with the eyelashes, and the hair on her head is thinning), a few other things that I don't think she wants me to share with you…and extreme pain in her feet. Weird, I know. Who would have thought it would be in the feet. The pain is so bad that it took her about a minute yesterday afternoon to hobble from the back door, across the deck and yard over to my office door. That’s about 40-45 feet. The pain is worse this morning. You have to just accept these things and deal with them. A minute is inconvenient, but at least she got my lunch to me on time.

Sandy finished the first cycle last night, and now she gets a week off with no chemo. I have no idea whether she will be able to recover from these symptoms fully in just a week, but my gut says that it will give her at least some relief. Hopefully, her feet will stop hurting her. I think she could manage the rest of it if the pain in her feet would just go away.

This experience is in stark contrast to the first round of chemo and radiation treatment she did last August and September. Then, it was the radiation that was so difficult and the chemotherapy was not nearly as toxic (we think, but what do we know?). Radiation was given every day for 7 weeks, and chemo was administered by IV once per week. It was a different chemo drug, too.

PS—just kidding about the lunch.