After the Twelfth and Final Chemo: Some throwing up, because of course
Well.. this was it. The day I've been waiting for since July. My final chemo.
Enjoying food while I still can. For tomorrow - chemo. Though, on the bright side, the final one.
Once more into the breach
- Strannik (@Strannik_REB45) December 12, 2014
So it's kind of fitting that it was the the one time I one time I wound up oversleeping. By half an hour. which meant to arrived at the hospital half an hour late. I wasn't too worried, because, in my experience, Cook County Hospital appointment times are, at best, polite suggestions, and it's not uncommon to sit an hour, if not longer, before they actually see you.
But the fact is that I did wind up getting into the infusion center almost half an hour later than usual. the nurse who usually handles the procedure for the group of patients I was part of wasn't in yesterday, so things went slower. Much slower. I wound up leaving the hospital almost an hour and a half later than I usually did.
By the time the infusion started, I was just eager to get it over with. Normally, if the procedure feels painful, I was supposed to tell the nurse and she'd slow down the infusion. But, like I said - I didn't want to spend any more time than Clinic J than absolutely necessary, so I just clenched my teeth and tried to distract myself with the book I was reading. After a while, the pain faded away.
I brought a small early Christmas present for my usual nurse, but since she wasn't there... I was told she'd be there next week, so I guess I'll stop by after my doctor's appointment. I said goodbye to the nurses at the clinic's front desk and thanked them for remembering my name and trying to pronounce it correctly (hey - they got hundreds, if not thousands of patients walking through that door every week, and I'm hardly the only one with a strange foreign name). And I wished them both happy holidays.
While my stomach felt unsettled throughout the entire procedure, it wasn't bad enough that I felt like vomiting. Or even phantom-vomiting. After the previous two session turned out to be fairly vomiting-light, I hoped my last session would be in the same vein. But no. As I was leaving the hospital grounds, I felt bile surging off my throat... I managed to make it as far as the nearest lawn before vomiting up loads of spit and anti-nausea meds. Like, there was a not-so-small, poisonous-yellow puddle left by the time I was done. While, technically, no food remnants were expelled, it felt too...heavy to count as phantom vomit.
After that, I as supposed to meet my mom and her guests ( gabryel an her husband and 6-year-old son) at Panera Bread. My stomach still felt unsettled, but when mom asked me over the phone what she should order for me, I wound up asking for soup and small piece of bread. I figured I would at least be able to handle that.
But once I sat down, it was clear that i would only be able to handle the bread... at best. So I nibbled on it a bit as I catted to our jet-legged guests. But I guess what - I wound up throwing up even those little morsels of bread.
At least I managed to make it to Panera Bread restroom.
When I got on the 'L' and headed home, I was already dozing off. By the time I made it home, I was pretty much old cold. I woke up around 6:00 PM. After the last two sessions, I usually felt well enough to at least have a little dinner, but after not one, but two vomits earlier that day.... yeah, my stomach wasn't feeling it. So I took the anti-nausea meds and went back to sleep.
I woke up several times throughout the night, and struggled to get back to sleep every time. I didn't fully, truly wake up until around 10:30 AM.
I had breakfast and took another anti-nausea pill. No vomiting so far.
Now... Well, like I said, I got a doctor's appointment next week. At this point, she said she'll schedule the CT scan for sometime in the next 3-4 weeks. And then...
My mom always taught her kids to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. And while my doctor has been pretty upbeat about my progress, there's always a chance my lymphoma hasn't been pounded into remission and I might need more treatments. So I can't quite fully relax.
But even so... it's hard not feel like at least some wight has been lifted off my shoulders. Like the light in the end of the tunnel is finally coming within reach.
Over the past few days, I've found myself humming a song I used to love when I was a teenager - a song that resurfaced from the recesses of my memory.
Seven colours curve across the sky
And I remember my first rainbow
Seems like a thousand years ago, I asked:
"Mama, what's a rainbow for?"
She said - "after the rain comes, after the rain,
after the rain comes sun"
She said - "After the rain comes,
after the rain comes the sun!"
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