Journey With Sam

My goal is to be honest on this blog during this process (maybe it can help someone later). This week has been randomly difficult.

I had a lot of anxiety hit on Sunday night before my treatment. I had read about people struggling with this. I had avoided this so far, but I didn’t realize how much I was dreading my “sick” week. A headache started Sunday night and I slept horribly that night. It is hard to realize that there is nothing you can do and you just have to accept whatever symptoms come. Even worse was making myself sick early because of the stress. I will do my best to calm my nerves before the next treatment, but unsure how successful I will be at that.

Monday’s treatment was rougher this week. My mom wasn’t feeling great so she stayed home while I went to treatment. Thankfully the blood work still looked good. I found a new low for my treatment. When you start treatment, they have to clean the port by pushing a saline treatment. This has an overwhelming smell to me and I can’t help but gag when they do it. They have to do it at the beginning and end of the treatment, which means I start and end on a bad note.

I slept through most of the treatment, which was nice. I guess that is the positive to not sleeping well the night before and starting my pre-meds with Benadryl. I struggled a lot with the Red Devil this week. I had ice chips to help keep my mouth numb (limit cold sores), but even the ice was making me sick. I was so excited to be done with this treatment and head home to rest. Thankfully there is only one of these left!

The rest of the week was randomly rough. I didn’t get horrible headaches, which was the big positive, however, I was more tired most days and required naps each day. I get incredibly shaky when I am tired, so that means I am shaky most of the time. My body temp is also super off. I go from crazy hot to freezing cold in minutes.

The newest and probably most random side effect is that my sense of smell seems to be randomly strong. I haven’t had a normal sense of smell since I broke my nose in 8th grade, but starting Thursday, I could smell way too much. Not being used to that means that most smells make me nauseous. Thankfully it seems to have been a 24 hour fluke. I always thought I wouldn’t mind having my sense of smell back, but this 24 hours has changed my mind and I happy to be back to my normal.

There were some positives to the week though:

• I felt good enough to get to work each day other than Jan 1 (which I had off anyway)
• I made it up to 10pm on NYE and counted that as a success since it was the east coast new year.
• I was able to make it to Shoes & Brews for the Thursday social run. I didn’t run, but Callie and I enjoyed a 1.5 mile walk and getting out to see my friends. My goal is to make this as often as possible. I will try running when I feel ok and just enjoy a walk when I am not feeling great. Shoes & Brews has been incredible since moving to Colorado and I know I need to keep going and enjoying this community to keep my mental state high.

I only have one more AC treatment before I start Taxol treatments, which are supposed to be much easier. I just need to get through one more treatment on January 14!