Eaten by Langoliers
It kind of blows my mind that it’s already October 12th. Where the hell did September go? In our house whenever someone asks “Where did the time go?” We always answer, “The Langoliers ate it.” (We’re big Stephen King fans at our house.) Well, the Langoliers really chomped down on the last month and a half because I don’t remember much of it going by.
I had chemo a week ago Monday and I’ve been having a surprisingly good time of it since then. “Bad week” was barely bad. I didn’t have any break-through nausea at all and what diarrhea I had was easily controlled. I feel fatigued and my hair is falling out, but other than that I feel pretty okay. Not great — but not bad, either.
The thing with my hair…sigh. It’s definitely thinning. Every time I brush my hair, I have a much bigger clump than usual to clean out of the brush. Also, it’s just falling out all over me pretty much all the time now. I don’t have any bare patches or anything like that, but it’s thinner and looks like of scraggly. My kind of chemo isn’t supposed to make all my hair fall out — but it’s not uncommon for this level of hair loss, so… I guess, as usual, I thought I might somehow be exempt from this side effect.
This week, “good week” has been better than usual too. Though, as I said before, I am fatigued and have very little energy for doing things.
What else is happening in my life that might be noteworthy? Orchestra and flute choir rehearsals are going well. The little dog is as barky as ever. Life goes on pretty much as usual. My friend Carol has started radiation treatments for her breast cancer. Five days a week for 6 and a half weeks. Yikes. She says that, so far, it doesn’t hurt though, so… that’s good. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that Carol and David (her husband, retired) and I get together a couple of times a week to watch episodes of The Sopranos on DVD. They’d never seen the series and I suggested that since we’re all going to be sitting around the house a lot, we might as well do something fun with part of the time. We’re at the end of Season 3 right now. Lots of good stuff coming up. (I’ve seen it all before.)
I’ve actually been spending a LOT of time watching television. Not so much regular broadcast stuff, but stuff on Hulu Plus or Netflix streaming. I re-watched all of “Enterprise” over the past few weeks. Yesterday I watched a documentary about the Amish (though I slept through part of it), another documentary about the Vatican, and part 1 of Ken Burns documentary about Prohibition. I watched all of the episodes of Breaking Bad on Netflix or on “Video on Demand” (great show) and I’m thinking about watching that Terra Nova show — though I have to admit it looks pretty stupid. If it is, I will not watch. I’ve got better options than to watch stupid TV shows. (Several more documentaries in my Netflix queue, for example.)
Anyway… I guess that’s about it from here. Still got cancer — my CEA level (a tumor marker) had doubled on my last test. Still doing chemo. I’ve got a CT scan scheduled for 10/25 and that ought to produce some interesting results.
I’m glad you’re having fewer intestinal side effects, but sorry to hear about the hair thinning. I hope that “thinning” is all it does.
Does your doctor have an explanation why your CEA level is increasing while you’re getting chemo?
You’re still in my prayers.
It’s possible that the inflammation caused by the chemo is causing the high CEA levels — that’s the theory, at least. I get another CEA test this coming Saturday, so we’ll see if the addition of Avastin to my chemo regimen has made any difference.
Have you seen the Deadwood series? Kind of rough stuff but well done. The “Woild West” as dirty and earthy as it probably was. Glad you are having good flute and orchestra!
Take care.
I haven’t see Deadwood, but I’ve read that it’s very good. I should probably put it in my list of things to watch.
Waaaaiiiit…. I *have* watched Deadwood! It was just that I didn’t remember because it was several years ago. Yeah! That was a great show!! Maybe I should re-watch it.
I did watch it again when it was on cable recently. Enough complexity to make the second round intersting. Of course, my spotty memory function makes anything over 15 minutes in the past a “new” experience.
I accidently caught the premiere of Terra Nova, while we were up north – Butch was asleep. It wasn’t awful (one station – nothing on). Then Butch & I tried to watch the second episode; he really tried to give it a chance, asked me to explain the premise, still tried to be open-minded. Finally he said “This is stupid!” and went to bed. I haven’t given it a look since.