A Much Needed Update

People have been urging me to post an update, so here it is.

The aftermath from the fifth treatment (when I wrote the last update) was truly awful. I had been saying that previous treatments left me feeling bad but not acutely miserable, but number five finally put me in a really awful place. The day after my last post I lay in bed literally all day, feeling really ill and uncomfortable and pathetic. That night I puked a bunch of times, marking my first experience in hugging the porcelain with chemo sickness. When I was first diagnosed, I thought I would be doing a whole lot of barfing but that is apparently not the case anymore with more modern medicines. Hopefully it won't happen much more. I also thought I would be losing a lot of weight with all of this, but with a decent appetite and lack of serious vomiting that hasn't been the case. I thought simply not drinking beer anymore would do the trick, but I suppose my general lack of movement these days probably compensates for those calories and my weight has remained steady (the doctor says this is good).

Round six was now eight days ago, and it was par for the course (especially compared to five), although it is now taking me about an entire week to feel "normal" again. Normal is such a relative term these days, as my body is just so weak and I get so tired so easily, but I use it here to mean no longer feeling chemo-y and sick. It is still such a difficult feeling to describe and I struggle to find comparisons. Think a really bad hangover that doesn't go away for days.

Luckily, I only have two more rounds and then I am finished. I know I should have a few weeks off before I start radiation, but that hasn't really been spelled out yet. All I know is it will be 30-45 minutes a day, 5 days a week, for a month. Apparently Hodgkin's has been successfully treated solely with chemotherapy or radiation, but a combination of the two is just as effective while minimizing the side effects of either...sounds good to me.

Also, to my Middlebury classmates: I fully plan on being at reunion this summer and if you are not there I will personally take offense.