Mid Chemo Round Update

It’s been 9 days since my last chemo treatment and 12 days until my next one. This round has been relatively mild from a side effect perspective. I’m still fighting fatigue, but not severe fatigue. I tried cutting back on my pain/anxiety medicine, but that little experiment proved to be uncomfortable. My current dosing is relatively low. I’m at 50% of the maximum daily dose for one of the lesser strength prescription pain medicines and at about 20% of maximum daily dose for my anxiety medicine. Ideally, I’d like to be at no medication. The self imposed cut back severely disrupted my sleep for almost a week. Lack of a good sleep made me generally uncomfortable. As such, yesterday I went back to the dose that helps me get by.

I had an interesting phone conversation with someone today. We didn’t know each other (she was a representative at a company where I bank). We began to talk about my speech impediment. She said her sister had a brain aneurysm which caused her to have a speech impediment, but it did not impact her cognitive abilities. She went on to say that her sister was very frustrated by this because she had trouble communicating with people and people treated her differently. She then said, “you must be frustrated.” Ah ha, (the proverbial light bulb went off in my head) that is the perfect word for how I feel, “FRUSTRATED.” Okay, I said it. I like to talk and communicate, but it’s hard for me to do so in a way that I feel is normal, especially over the phone. This is not a complaint; I’m trying to share with those that read my blog how I feel. I’m looking forward to my new month prosthetic that will be ready in about a month. They took a mouth impression last week and it will take about 3 fittings to get it right. The first fitting is this coming Monday. I hope I’m being realistic about what this device will do for me. Once it’s fitted properly, it will take a few weeks to get used to. I’ll let you know how it works.

That’s all for now. Thanks, as always, for checking in. Take care everyone.