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Friday, July 29, 2016

When Chemotherapy Gets Complicated

When I finished acute treatment six months ago my oncologist talked to me about the road beyond, and that he wanted me to do 12 months of cytotoxic chemotherapy along with an oral agent.  He warned me that there would be a point at which I would not want to do that any more, but that a year is what he thought was ideal.  This month was my sixth treatment and I now understand what he meant.  And maybe I am lucky I got this far before it got challenging.
The first thing that happened was that I forgot that I was getting chemotherapy on that day.  What?  How could that be?  Well, I did, and as the result I missed a meeting that I had set up and wasted a lot of people's time.  I felt very badly about it, and beyond apologizing there really is nothing I can do to fix it other than make an effort to not let it happen again.  It was a stark reminder that life is cery complicated and that the juggle can be more than one can reasonably manage at times.
The other thing is that I have started having an allergic reaction to the chemotherapy.  I do not have the side effect (yet) that I was worried about, and this in no way will limit my therapy, but I am beginning to understand why people might want to stop therapy and get on with life.  The problem is that this is a bad disease and getting on with life now might translate to giving it up prematurely later, and so of course I am going to do everything my oncologist recommends that I do, but I have gotten  to the point where I could see how it could get old. But, as Dory the forgetful but optimistic fish often says, just keep swimming.

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