Recovery Week - Harder than Chemo Week?

Looking back on things (at least from the perspective of how I feel right now, today), the first few days of chemo week are pretty smooth.  For the most part, you are still feeling pretty well.  About day 2 or 3 the leg pains begin, but I have learned to manage that pain fairly well.  Days 4 and 5 are harder as the nausea begins to hit you big.  I am hoping that we have learned to keep the nausea under control by balancing three different nausea medicines.  The hardest time seems to be Thursday of chemo week to Thursday of recovery week. 

After Round 1, I was hospitalized for neutropenic fever. After Round 2, I was hospitalized for to get the vomiting and pain under control.  The adventure continues.  Tuesday evening, I noticed I wasn't feeling as good as I expected.  At midnight, I was struck with a low-grade fever and these incredible stomach cramps.  I was on narcotics and the cramp felt that stomach hunger pangs.  I can only imagine how they would have felt without the narcotics.  With the stomach cramps came back pain and this crazy bowel movement which seemed to be a cross between diarrhea and constipation.  Thankfully, the stomach cramps went away by about 6 am.

The cramps came back at around 6 pm last night and stuck around until 4:00am.  When they went away, it was like when you take a turn after having the flu and you realize what it's like to feel normal again. 

I did go online last night to look up abdominal pain and neutropenia to see if there was anything I could do.  The results weren't pleasant.  There was no, "make some herbal tea of lemon and peppermint and take a hot bath", instead the results were clinical articles that addressed a variety of very serious conditions, some with fairly high mortality rates.  It was a sobering moment.  I had expected this chemo regime to be much like the first I had a year ago.  I assumed this, because no one told me otherwise.  I obviously knew and know the serious of the underlying disease.  But both my recent experience and what I read last night have lead me to realize that the chemotherapy medicines I am taking are incredibly toxic and dangerous for your body.  I can see some of you thinking, well duh!, we could have told you that.  But we're talking destruction of bone marrow, ulcers throughout your dietary tract, high risk of infection due to the destruction of the immune system.  And I don't mean infection that you might catch a cold or flu, I mean infections so hard to treat that in 20% to 40% of the cases they will kill you.

That got me to thinking about would you want to be told everything before begin chemo.  Usually I fall into the camp of complete disclosure, but in this circumstance, I think I appreciate not knowing.  First, the doctors don't know how any patient is going to respond and what side effects they will have.  The argument would go, why worry someone about a possible risk and add unnecessary anxiety.  Second, and this is key for me, I find I need to stay focused on the moment at hand.  It takes enough effort to focus on basic life functions such as, drink more water, eat more food, don't throw up, make it to the toilet, try and sleep, etc.

Those are my thoughts for the day.  Hopefully they are neither too disjointed nor depressing.  It's Thursday, despite the slight fever, weakness and fatigue (I will rest/sleep on and off all day for hours at a time) and fear of those crazy stomach cramps, I am doing really well.  Looking forward to a semi-normal week next week!  As always, thanks for the care packages, meals, etc.  We really appreciate the support.