Feeling blue

Just finished my second chemo injection. I felt shitty going in, maybe because I couldn't sleep last night. There was some question as to whether chemo should go ahead; I had obviously picked up a virus, with the sore throat and fever last week and the ulcer in my mouth. My oncologist was prepared to delay chemo for a week -- she's worried the mouth sore will get worse -- but I really didn't want to get off schedule. And when my blood tests came back, my white and red blood cell counts were all great. So we went ahead. On Dr. Lee's instructions, I sucked on an orange popsicle while I was being infused, apparently to keep the drugs away from that area by temporarily freezing it.

But I seem to have rib pain again, and the blood indicator for bone metastasis (alkaline phosphatase), which had been slightly elevated, is now way up. Why would the chemo make the rib pain go away for a week or so and then stop working? The doc hopes it's an anomaly. Meanwhile, my shoulder blade is still keeping me low. I found the day depressing, but I need to take a cue from a young woman who was also getting chemo, who looked perfectly well but has Stage 4 breast cancer, metastasized throughout her body, and is on permanent chemo of the sort I had five years ago. She was preternaturally cheery and seemed to have accepted her fate as something that simply ran in her family. She truly did appear to be living in the moment.

On the other hand, I could take my cue from philosopher Alain de Botton (see article in Maclean's April 6 issue, p. 43), who believes it's important to accept that life is, indeed, an utter vale of tears, but thinks we should take comfort from the fact that we're all in it together.

Pollyanna moments:

• As usual, good friends made me laugh at the beginning and end of my long chemo day. Though when I'm feeling sad like this, I kind of want to be left alone, it is good to be dragged out of my funk from time to time.
  
• When I got home, I found one of my brothers had left a card and some daffodils at my doorstep (and there was a photo of some daffs in my email inbox from Neil).
• On Saturday, I got to see two of my not-so-little-anymore nephews play hockey. I nearly fainted at one point (and nearly did a face plant out of my wheelchair) -- I guess codeine on top of the virus and lack of sleep was a little too much. But it was fun to be with my family and to see those little guys whose diapers I changed grab the puck in a breakaway. In the words of Jane Siberry in "Hockey," "He'll have that scar on his chin forever / Some day his girlfriend will say...hey...where... / And he might look out the window...or not."