Chemo Day Eve

A couple weeks ago I did a little rundown of what a chemo day is like. Tonight I am going to spit out a description of what Chemo Day Eve is like for me, because it’s that now and tomorrow I am going to feel like shit and will forget.

Due to changing hospitals, and chemo regimens, and holidays messing with schedules, this is the first Chemo Day Eve where I actually got two weeks between cycles, and the main thing I can say about Chemo Day Eve is it’s physically as close to normal as I have felt in as long as I can remember at this point. Not that I feel good, but I feel as close to good as I have not only since chemo started, or since diagnosis, but maybe since last Spring.

I woke up this morning with just a light dusting of neuropathy in my feet, and my usual daily struggle with intense heartburn. Other than that I spent the day not feeling much worse than I should expect as a nearly 49-year-old.

Basically that’s the start of Chemo Day Eve. I wake up after a week or so of just hellish side effects then a slow recession of the worst problems to just burning of various types in various areas, and then I feel like I don’t have much to complain about as the sun comes up on the 13th day.

The thing about not feeling that bad, is that it rams right up against the certainty that I am going to get walloped with the shit again tomorrow. That knowledge comes along just as the brain fog burns off a bit, making it crystal clear exactly how awful it’s going to be, and it’s really hard not to think about.

I put in over 10000 steps today trying not to think about it. I walked all over the place. I walked for coffee. I walked to the top of the reservoir with a Teams meeting running on my phone. I walked at lunchtime and after work and just basically filled my eyeballs with outside and my earballs with audiobooks and tried everything I could within my diminished envelope of action to try and get my mind off the fact that I am going to spend the entire day tomorrow getting poisoned. That is a hard thing to ignore.

It’s impossible not to have some level of anxiety. It really really sucks on a level that I have never experienced, mentally. I have anticipated terrible things in my life. Days I knew were, at the time, going to be the worst day of my life looming up towards me on a calendar. This is different than that, because it’s repetitive. It’s the worst day, again. Fucking wears on you that you know what it’s going to be like, and there’s only the tiniest little bit you can do to try and make it more tolerable.

So I worked and walked and cracked some jokes and just let that mental rain cloud park itself over me because there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I am not generally a proud person, but I do take a certain amount of pride in my ability to not sweat what I cannot control, and this is something I cannot control. That’s not strictly true, I could quit chemo and that is control. My ability to control it would mean giving up, and I do not give up. So that is not an option. My only option is just to keep going. It’s good not to have options.

The warmest, sunniest, summerfall October day I could wish for, and I made the most of it, and I let myself cry a little bit in frustration and I let myself fail a little bit at the things I couldn’t get done, but I know in two weeks I will feel normal for about 24 hours again, and those things will still be there to do and so will I.

Chemo Day Eve is rushing around trying not to think about Chemo Day.

That’s all it is. It’s all you can do and it’s never enough.

Happy Tuesday!