One thing I am learning is that I do not know what will be hard or easy about this journey with ovarian cancer. My first chemo session was grueling. Simple openings of ports for infusions became hours long processes, what should have been finished by the evening took until 6am. The process exhausted both my love Bob and I. The second session of chemo last Thursday was straight forward. Placed in the hands of one of the goddesses of cancer care, “a good chemo nurse,” operations proceeded smoothly. I slept and read through the day and we were finished by about 6:30, in time for a clear drive home to Laramie, the sun setting over the mountains as I rode along cheerful and relatively pain free.
I expected to feel worse at the beginning of my recovery from round one of the chemo rather than at the end. Instead, the first couple of days I was stiff and a bit painful but alert and productive. By a week after my chemo, however, I was so tired that even watching streamed TV felt like an accomplishment. I just dozed in my chair the whole day. The three and a half hour drive to Denver for the second treatment was pure pain (for Bob as well as me as he cursed at the suckitude of driving on I-25 at Denver rush hour). At the end, I just crawled into my hotel bed slept for three hours. The chemo treatment the next day felt easier than the drive down.
Since chemo had gone well, I expected to be okay yesterday, the first day after. Instead, it was one of the hardest days yet. I got a neulasta shot to boost white blood cells and got a classic side effect, bone pain. My ribs seemed to scream, making it hard to concentrate or move. By the end of a day of a doctor’s visit and sitting in my chair, I was almost mute, exhausted by my pain. I didn’t even try to sleep in my bed as I couldn’t imagine being comfortable on my side, and ended up staying the whole night in the chair.
I was dreading today but between pain meds and claritin, the pain has been manageable. And I even had some energy. I started a couple of new projects and got to totter out into the warm sun. With the help of Bob, I walked around the yard and was rewarded for my efforts with a look at his secret garden, the walled garden behind his workshop where he has managed to grow apple trees that would have been completely unable to survive on the open windy plains of the rest of our beautiful but bleak Wyoming yard. Within the walls, hops trail over the fence, asparagus plants are going wildly to seed, and Indian corn is sprouting (Bob picked one for me and I got a taste of a tiny tender but still green cob). There are, even, for the first time, a crop of apples actually growing on the apple trees. Green and red globes peaking through dark leafy trees. The perfect ingredients of a lovely and unexpectedly nice day.