note: thanks to all for the kind birthday/anniversary wishes, I appreciate you all!
It is incredible how supportive my community is.
It has been a while since I gave an update and a lot of life has happened in the meantime! I had a wonderful visit with my parents, I ate delicious food, I sang in a beautiful concert, and I turned 38. Phew!
It was a minor miracle that I spent the week leading up to this weekend on prednisone. I felt like my old self (or, more honestly, better). I was cheerful, happy, awake and active. It seems like I spent all week kicking ass. I KNEW, logically, it was temporary. But still. Here we are.
I went in on Monday morning to see if the third time was the charm. It was indeed! The oncologist was very impressed with the progress so far, she even said that if she hadn't known I'd had a bunch of tumors on my back she'd never guess that now. And the prednisone had done what I needed: my liver and kidney enzymes were out of the danger zone and I was given a passing grade and sent into the treatment room. Yay?
I had the foresight this time to bring hard candies to help me keep the weird taste out of my mouth (even though it is in IV infusion, it makes my mouth taste super gross) and I was smart enough to bring some cross-stitching so, between that and goofing off with Isaac, the time flew.
But since then, boy howdy. I was only tired on the way home from the cancer center, and we had a chill night in that evening. But since then it's become clear that this treatment hit me much, much harder than the last. I have been trying to walk the fine line between getting a little bit of work done and getting as much rest as I should get. It's a hell of a line to walk.
My theory as to why this treatment hit me so much harder is that they did not taper the prednisone since I was only on it for 7 days. So perhaps what is hitting me is the combined "you just had a bunch of fairly poisonous shit stuffed into your body" paired with "you're also experiencing mild withdrawals and 'roid rage". Or maybe this is the whole thing about immunotherapy or cancer treatment in general, which is WHO KNOWS?
The week of semi-normalcy was beautiful-- I am so glad I had it. But now it's gone, and in some ways, it feels farther away than it was before. Maybe that's because it's getting colder, maybe it's because my head hurts. All I know is that despite seemingly everything going well, it's still a fight that I have to fight, which I intend to.