I have to give a shoutout to the folks that came up with Protonix. One of the worst things about the first few months of chemo was a constant and horrendous heartburn that antacids and various stomach acid reducers did nothing to solve. Eating Tums was like tossing an ice cube into a furnace. Just nothing, except maybe explosions. 5-FU does not fuck around when it comes to F’ung the U that makes up my insides.
They gave me a prescription for this stuff and it almost immediately turned me into a simple burping machine instead. It’s bizarre because the nausea wears off with the chemo over a week or so, but my body still wants to throw up, so I go through spasms where my digestive system feels like it’s definitely tossing everything into reverse, but without the mental trauma of actually feeling pukey, and I never (so far) throw up. I just make a lot of really gross noises, and occasionally a yelp when things happen fast enough my poor liver gets pinched or poked.
Chemo still makes me absolutely miserable, but as it wears off, this stuff removes the one of longest lasting and more debilitating side effects and lets me focus more on things like “Can I balance well enough to walk?” and “Can I see?” and “Will I poop my pants today or not poop for a week?” It’s nice. Life is so rad.
Another good thing is the generic name is pantoprazole so I wake up every morning and pretend I am a waiter at Olive Garden that was just dared to serve everyone in an exaggerated Italian accent with the obvious mispronunciation.
Every day is a bonus checkpoint. Happy Tuesday!