Wednesday, June 26, 2013

24 Heures du Normal

Sheesh, more dark time on the blog. Sorry about that.

In case you're not an auto racing aficionado, the title is a play on the "24 Heures du Mans" which is a famous auto race, the most recent installment of which took place this past weekend. It corresponded with 24 hours in which I felt vaguely normal.

As I wrote last week, I found the side effects of the anti-nausea drugs to be quite unpleasant. I spent a fair bit of time intentionally altering my consciousness a few decades ago but these days I prefer it completely unmodified. I rarely even wear earphones while out and about because I prefer to have my senses engaged with the world around me. Those drugs had some serious mind-altering properties.

At my first chemo a week ago I was given a schedule for taking the drugs. I had been warned by Big Sister and my doctors that it is well worth following the schedule - that once nausea sets in it can be very hard to get it under control. So I followed my schedule precisely.

That schedule ended Sunday night, after which there was just one drug (Zofran) to take in case nausea did appear. I was really looking forward to a no-pill day on Monday.

Sunday night I started feeling much better. I even mowed the lawn. We've been having a heat wave with several days above 90F and humidity, but it cooled off into the low 80s and there was a nice breeze and it felt good to do something useful. I was hot afterward but still felt "good".

Monday morning I still felt pretty good. I actually logged in and did some work. It was nice to not be taking any drugs.

But by Monday night I was having some bothersome stomach discomfort. It was hard to drink as much fluid as I knew I needed because every swallow of fluid would produce a painful splash of stomach acid into my esophagus. At one point we were at the mall to be someplace cool and I made the mistake of drinking some fizzy root beer. I thought the heartburn (which I've never suffered from) was going to kill me. Very painful. Fortunately it lessened after a few minutes.

Then I was uncomfortable all Monday night. The discomfort is low enough that I can get to sleep when really tired, but when I awake in the middle of the night and it is enough to prevent me going back to sleep.

I'm pretty sure I haven't had a full night sleep since this story began on May 10.

I'll catch up in chronological order. We think we've figured out the stomach pain issue and I'll fill you in when we get there.

No comments:

Post a Comment