Chemo 5 - Almost Half Way Through

In usual form I am late with a blog post and can't sleep the night before my next chemo treatment. I no longer feel like I am anxious about it but maybe subconsciously I am because my body will not let me go to sleep. I had my 5th chemo treatment two weeks ago tomorrow and happily I do not have much to report from the past two weeks. My recovery from chemo is definitely getting better each time as far as feeling sick. I have hardly had to use my nausea medicine or had to deal with a headache or other random ailments. The main thing is tiredness. I was extremely tired for three - four days afterwards. I still felt up to doing at least one activity a day which is a huge improvement from my first couple of treatments. However the tiredness is staying with me much longer. I believe yesterday was the first day I have not felt utterly exhausted at some point in the day.  I can handle being tired though so knock on wood things stay this way and no more other blahnesses.

My counts were up for the weekend I had chemo and then of course have been down ever since. I have come to acknowledge I will probably be neutropenic for the remainder of my time going through chemo so Im just making the best of it I can. I have had a cold for about a week now which has made me a little nervous. As I have explained in previous posts being neutropenic means my white blood cells (the cells that help fight infections/sickness) are oober low so I am more likely to get very sick. Thankfully though so far, another knock on wood, I have not had a temperature. When you are neutropenic if your temp hits 100.5 or higher you have to go to the hospital and have them pump you with fluids and drugs to make you better since your body does not have the cells to fight whatever is making you ill. Soooo lets hope that doesnt happen!

Dr. Wiedl has decided to no longer give me the bone marrow shot, neulasta, when my counts are low though. This is pretty good news for me. I am very happy I do not have to go through that pain again. BUUUTTT this means we are relying on my body to recover those killed cells on its own and if it doesnt in time for the next chemo there is a chance we will have to postpone that treatment. So that is the downside. She said we will also take into consideration how I am feeling and decide from there. So fingers crossed every other Friday from here till July my counts are high enough to get it. I am really hoping for a July 4th celebration of no more chemo!

Tomorrow is Chemo 6 woohoo!! After tomorrow I will be half way done with my treatments. I am very excited for this, the countdown will sound so much better from here on out. Since this post is reasonably short compared to my norm I've decided to include some random cancer things I have discovered/gone through.

1. I have learned to greatly appreciate nose hair. I hardly have any nose hair left and my nose is continually runny. It is the most annoying thing ever!

2. Maybe its because I know a lot of pregnant people right now but I swear going through chemo seems to be quite similar to being pregnant minus getting the human being at the end. We can't eat the same things (I miss you deli meat and sushi), we're tired all of the time, we have nausea, we have cravings (I have had more milkshakes in the last two months than probably the last year), and we're emotional. Yep, I'm chemopregnant.

3. Chemobrain - So there is this thing called chemobrain. Chemotherapy can cause you to forget things, kind of space out, and mistake words and this is called chemobrain. I thiiinnkk I have experienced this but if you know me you know making word mistakes is normal so I can never tell if its chemobrain or just an Amberism haha BUT now regardless I have an excuse and no one can make fun of me :)

4. Chemo, for me at least, has made my skin very smooth but at the same time dry. I am not sure how this works but it does. So if you're going through chemo or know someone who is buy tons of lotion and lip balm.

5. I still have not figured out how to wash buzzed hair. How much shampoo are you actually supposed to use? I find myself using the same amount as before and I know this is wrong haha. On that note I do not think all of my hair is going to fall out. I spoke with the doctor on Tuesday and she said she thinks if I was going to loose it all it would have happened by now. So woop woop to that! It still falls out alllllll of the time, another super annoying thing, but there is still a good amount on my head so I'll take it. It will be interesting to see what happens. I am slowly becoming more confident with my buzzed head than I was before. I now typically only wear my wig to work and out to certain events/occasions but I am going to guess as it gets hotter that will lessen even more.

6. I have been curious about Cancer and nutrition and have purchased two books I would suggest. The first is "Anticancer: A New Way of Life" by David Servan - Schreiber. This book is by a scientist who went through brain cancer and became very curious on how to keep from getting cancer again. It addresses the environmental affects on cancer growth. It can get pretty intense with the scientific verbiage but it has some great points in it and knowledge as to nutrition and your body and cancer. Basically it suggests clean eating (no sugar, processed foods, white flour, etc...), working out (walking everyday), positive outlook, and spirituality (yoga). It is definitely worth a read. I actually found this book randomly while walking through Cary Town in Mongrel, a local nicnac store. This store does not carry a lot of books or things on Cancer so I think it was meant to be. I am slowly trying to integrate what I learned into my everyday living.

The other book is "Happily Hungry: Smart Recipes for Kids with Cancer" by Danielle Cook Navidi. The author's son had Hodgkins when he was a teenager (now an adult) and like most oncologists, including mine, they said to let him eat whatever he would eat to keep his calories up. After a few months of him eating fast food, pizza, whatever he wanted, the mom decided this isnt right and came up with healthy recipes that taste good to kids and help with some of the ailments that come along with chemo. This book has a lot of great recipes and it is also nice because it has an ailment index. So every recipe is marked by what it helps to treat, i.e. nausea, fatigue, mouth sores, constipation, etc... and you can look in the index find your issue and then find the recipes that help to treat it. Here is a link to a Today Show clip focusing on the book, click here.

In the Anticancer book Servan does address this lack of nutrition talk that tends to happen between oncologists and patients. He found that it was due to oncologists constantly needing to be on top of the medical practices that help their patients, that it is hard to also be on top of the environmental possibilities as well. Sounds like a logical explanation to me. I can not imagine all of the medical research and findings happening everyday that oncologists have to stay on top of. So it is up to us to stay on top of our nutrition. I do understand the wanting of patients to eat what they feel like to keep their calories up because there are days when I really just do not feel like eating but at the same time it is important to remember what we are putting into our body. Although I will say I do not feel guilty when I do have my milkshakes haha.

Also, from the research I have done on cancer I will say it seems nutrition varies dependent on your cancer. So this is just my experience and my thoughts. For some cancers certain diets are very important to implement. I know I found some articles that said no dairy or absolutely no sugar and so on. So please do your own research and speak with your oncologist before making any dietary changes.

Okay those are the main updates I can think of at the moment! Thank you for reading and your continued thoughts and prayers. Only 3 more months, woohoo!!