Day 154, Turning Point

As I write this, the side effects of my sixth and final cycle of chemotherapy are closing in around me.  I’ve just thrown a couple ibuprofen into the looming darkness, and they are holding it at bay just a little longer, hopefully long enough for me finish this post.  But the strange truth is, I’m welcoming the darkness this time.

Suffice to say cycle five was very tough on me both physically and emotionally.  Since my diagnosis five months ago, the theme of my treatment has been “things will get worse before they get better”.  As cycle five was so much worse than cycle four, it became impossible not to worry about how bad my sixth and final cycle would be.  It was very tough emotionally.  If I knew any government secrets I would gladly have told them to avoid further torture.  Tears were shed.  An object may have been thrown while screaming obscenities.

But, strangely, wonderfully, and completely unexpectedly, this cycle isn’t starting off as badly as the last cycle.  Contrary to my expectations last week, I not only made it to the last indoor track session of the season, but I was able to maintain a slow run for over a mile to start.  It was not only a much needed emotional boost, but I imagine getting the bodily fluids flowing helps to spread the drug around to all the nooks and crannies of my body and leaves no place for the cancer to safely hide.  Kill them all, take no prisoners.

I also underestimated the emotional boost from simply knowing there is no next cycle.  If there is a darkest moment in my treatment, well, that would have been when I was having radiation treatments while living with a catheter and recovering from surgery.  But, if there’s a second darkest moment related to chemotherapy, it either has already happened in cycle five or will occur in the next week or two.  Once the bottom of this cycle has been reached, I should be on an indefinite trend of improvement.  In the not too distant future, I should finally have more good days than bad days for the first time in half a year.

To be sure, there are still challenges ahead.  One challenge is continued testing and another set of scans, or what I prefer to call gathering enemy intelligence.  Basically, the oncologist needs a recon mission to assess the enemy casualties caused by his nuclear bombing of my body.  Hopefully that will corroborate the wonderful news that the blood tests have been producing.  And of course there will be more cystoscopies to see whether my bonus cancer has returned to my bladder.

The other challenge is that the current plan is to put me on a rather new and expensive drug to continue the battle.  This may introduce new side effects, though it should be nothing so drastic as chemotherapy.  And unlike chemotherapy, the side effects should be steady and predictable.  Chemo is particularly cruel as the cycles put you on an unpredictable roller coaster and you never know quite how you’ll feel on any specific day.  Why else would my final cycle be more tolerable than the previous one?  Actually, I have a theory about that.

I started cycle five with runs the day before, then the morning of treatment, and finally the day after at the indoor track.  That left me tired and crabby.  Add in some over enthusiasm when sprinting at the indoor track and I ended up with a muscle injury.

Muscles don’t seem to recover as well during chemo.  This makes perfect sense as chemo causes a lot of collateral damage.  The body is very busy repairing and cleaning up after the latest battle without me adding excessive exercise on top of it.  One victim of friendly fire has been my digestive system, making it harder to get energy and raw materials into the body just when they’re needed the most.

So I’ve learned the benefit of balancing exercise with quality rest.  Something along the lines of every mile walked or ran has to be compensated for by binge watching an equal number of episodes of some show.  It also means doing more walking and less running, and trying to mix in a bit of strength training which I need to get much better at.

Saying this cycle is off to a better start than the previous one isn’t just a feeling.  My blood tests also show that I’m less anemic and have higher protein levels than I did on the previous cycle.  So while I felt too tired and sore to go running ahead of my final cycle, the body was evidently making a lot of progress.

So I look back to the looming darkness and say “bring it on, I’m ready for ya!” The sooner I get through it the sooner I get to the better days that are waiting for me on the other side.  The past five months of battle are behind me.  I can see the finish line in sight, and it’s time for the finishing sprint!  Sort of.  Most of this finishing sprint will be spent on the couch.  I hear Ricky Gervais has a new series on Netflix.