Round 2 and Spooky Season

I'll tell you, these treatment cycles are real rollercoasters. But I'm starting to get a sense of what my calendar looks like. My experience with these first two has been something like this:

Day 1 and 2: Feeling decent, letting that chemo pump. Feels weird to be hooked up and the smaller side effects are super apparent: Can't touch or eat anything cold, jaw spasms when eating,  tingles in the fingers and toes, mouth dryness, etc. 

Day 3 and 4: Train Wreck. Headaches, needing lots of sleep, eating and drinking are more difficult, gut is a mess, plus the minor side effects. 

Day 5-10: Each day is a little better, more energy - like maybe i can actually cook dinner on day 6! or go to the store on day 7! See a friend on day 8!

Day 11-14: Feeling worse again, though now its feeling bad from the cancer not the chemo (we hope, as the chemo fights the cancer, these days will be less bad).

Then you go back for more chemo! 

So I did go back for another round on the 29th, which means today is day 5. I'm at the start of feeling better after a rough few days. My infusion day was long - I was at the hospital from 745 to 230, and I'm staring to think thats maybe how long these days are going to be.  This time (and I assuming going forward) I was in shared space, so Fauxliot stayed in his bag, but he did his best looking like a total creep (zoom in for creepy little eyes).  I munched on saltines, and watched TV shows on my ipad and fell in and out of sleep. 

The other cool thing I did this time was participate in a study on the effects of chemo on stregth and muscle control for a graduate student thesis. She hooked my one arm up to the wild machine that she and her classmates built in their biomechanical engineering lab (If i remember correctly) and had me do some tests. I'll meet with her again in a couple of months, and she'll retest me and see what the chemo is doing to me (aside from literally eating my muscles). She even took a picture for me so I could brag about being a science experiment. #ThisIsMyHalloween Costume

In the midst of all this, we did manage to see a couple friends for lunch on Saturday AND go to the home depot to buy lightbulbs because we live in a house of dimmer switches and all our fancy bulbs have been dying all year, plummeting us unto darkness. That was my major accomplishment of the week.

We've had a few seasonal drop offs of soup, bourbon, candy corn, a tiny pumpkin, and pumpkin bread. On Sunday night, Ruth joined some friends on a festive neighborhood halloween decorations walk. As this week goes on, and I slowly rejoin the human world, I hope to be taking walks and doing chores and all around contributing more to the world. Oh, and I get my booster shot on Saturday. Woo hoo!