Third round of chemo or Pour no sugar on me!

Time´s flying my friends! We´re already at the end of round three.

You know, one of my many doctors said that getting chemo would be like walking up a flight of stairs. The first one or two floors are easy breezy. But you will tire the more floors you walk and so does your body during chemo. Now the thing is- my chemo is not like walking up the stairs, my chemo is like running up the stairs. Usually the patient would get 17 days between each CHOEP cycle so the body can recover and rebuild all important blood components. At the moment I´m at a ten days CHOEP cycle and it´s starting to show. At this point I feel like giving you a taste of what it feels like to go through what I´m going through without the sugarcoating on it. Don´t want to know? That´s fine, I wouldn´t either :) Just skip to the tl;dr and you´re fine.

Wanna know? Here´s my list of current side effects with the corresponding meds:

• Pain. Like everywhere. I think my body has adapted a quite high level of pain tolerance by now. And that´s good because the painkillers I get tend to not woork anymoore (Ibu 600, jeez not even the good stuff!).
• Neuropathy. Fingers are almost completely numb, toes are starting to get numb. Everyday things are getting really hard if you cannot control the feeling and pressure in your fingers. Like picking up a Euro coin you dropped. That´s seriously frustrating. No meds for that, not even sure it is reversible after chemo. My doc however decided to reduce the Vincristin (that´s one of the meds responsible for Neuropathy) concentration for the last cycle. Hope that helps.
• Tremor. My hands are shaking, can´t control it. If I´m emotionally stressed it gets really worse. Eating jell-o is a real challenge! ;) (And don´t expect any non-shaky photos from me in the coming weeks! I´m just glad I don´t drop the camera while taking a picture!)
• Sleeplessness. Not so bad, I have always been a nightowl anyway. If I could sleep this neat little blog wouldn´t exist (Well, it´s not great and made of mashed potatoes, but it´s mine!). ;) And for the nights I need to sleep I still have sleeping pills.
• Change in taste. Things taste different, mostly worse than before. I have lost Guacamole to chemo. Let´s all take a minute to mourn... :(
• Sickness. No throwing up though, thank goodness. Can take nice little pills called MCP 10 AL against that. Unfortunately, they are not working very well. Actually, they don´t work at all for me. Oh well.
• Muscle cramps. Mostly during the night. Great way to wake up! Take magnesium pills against that.
• Dry mouth with sticky spit. Not so bad but still not very great. Mouth wash against that.
• Dark spots on skin. It seems my body wants to adapt to the age I should be when having this kind of cancer. I have no idea if they will go away again but apparently it´s quite usual to get changes on the skin (this also means that the skin gets thinner at some places tending to tear and bleed. That´s why I cannot shave the last stubbles on my head. Or get a cool tattoo to cover the bald head XD )

• Slow regeneration. My port wound is still not completely healed. Actually all nurses and doctors make a "Ewwww!" face when they see it. It still hurts and we all hope it won´t become infected. Losing my port would be very bad right now. (Will probably also become a problem when we take out my wisdom tooth...)

• Coma states. Can fall asleep within seconds. Looks kinda scary for other people. Hihi. :)
• Splenomegalie. That means my spleen is bigger than it should be (in hospital it was alsmost thrice it´s size. It has shrunken which is good! :)). This is one part of my cancer and also a side effect of the blood damage. Sometimes it´s pushing on my stomache making me sick. It also can be painful especially when having to sit upright for a longer time.  
• Chemo brain. Yep, still dumb as f*** :)
• Hairloss. Aw c´mon, that horse is dead!
• Infertility. DINKs 4 life, what can I say. Still waiting for the menopausal symptoms though.

And that were the just the side effects of the chemo meds or the meds I get to help my body take on chemo meds. Who wants to know about how it feels when your blood is... bloodless? :)

• Thrombocytes: At values below 100k it´s called thrombocytopenia, at values below 30k there is a risk of spontaneous bleeding (like nose bleeding, bleeding gums or even brain bleeding). My values are ranging somewhere between 90k and 30k so I bruise easily. Did you know you could get bruises on the soles of your feet? Yes, you can and it hurts like hell when walking. The only shoes I can wear right now are my 10 years old Chucks that are only held together by dirt and love. :) Luckily, the thrombocyte infusion last week had no side effects and helped a bit.
• Leukocytes: My leukocyte values are jumping between waaaay too low (around 2000) and waaay too high (like 20k). Chemo makes leukos low, Neulasta makes them go up. I don´t have that much feelable effects from the value itself (well besides my immune system being fucked up rendering me grounded at home :( ) but as you sure remember Neulasta has funny side effects. Tomorrow my next Neulasta shot waits for me. Yay. 
• Hemoglobin: A healthy woman should have a Hb value over 12, since mine is below ten I´m officially anaemic. Below eight a blood transfusion is necessary, which I already had twice. On my last blood check up on Wednesday my value was at 7.4. With this low Hb you usually feel weak (going to the toilet feels like running a marathon. Or how I imagine one might feel after running a marathon :)), cold, your heart races, you are short of breath and your brain doesn´t work very good (partially even lack of language like missing words completely or spelling them wrong). Your tongue becomes a lazy fat glob in your mouth making you talk not just like a dumb person but also like a drunken dumb person. Instead of giving me a further transfusion my doc decided to give me an Epo shot. That´s the stuff pro cyclists use for doping (Aww maaan, no more Tour de France for me? I´ve been training so hard for it!). Idiots. Epo is basically comparable to Neulasta, it´s supposed to help your body build the blood component it needs (in this case hemoglobin). Ahh, did I hear "blood building"? Yes indeed! Epo has also basically the same side effects as Neulasta PLUS flu-like symptoms like fever or chills and severely elevated blood pressure! And since hemoglobin is nothing without some iron (and of course my iron value is also way too low), I get one infusion of iron every week for the next weeks.

 It basically feels like your body is failing you. More and more. I felt actually better when it just was me and my demon. But then again, I would probably be dead by now without chemo treatment so what´s a few side effects compared to that, right?

tl;dr

Sucks to be me right now ;)  But let´s keep our fingers crossed that my blood values tomorrow are good enough so we can keep on running up the stairs! Wouldn´t want to fall behind! There is still a whole skyscraper of stairs waiting for me after CHOEP, are you up for it? :) 

P.S.: What can I say? It´s plain disappointing. I´m giving up. Science... it failed me! And just think about the 16 € I spent on the UV lamp! Ahhh, what a cruel world! What I´m talking bout? My final result of getting the Doxorubicin to fluorescence:

Nothing!

Let´s just hope the meds do a better job doing what they´re actually supposed to do- killing cancer! 

P.P.S.: We all knew it for like ever but now it´s official: I´m severely disabled. 100% bitch!