#46 It's Todayday.

Three days ago I couldn't stomach a baked yam. Today I had a grass fed tenderloin, mashed cauliflower, roasted brussel sprouts, asparagus and a salad. There's no rhyme or reason to it.

Chemo was last Thursday. Chemo day is pretty much always a blur - especially when I have to navigate the battle on my own. It takes all my mental and physical energy to just get home. The next day I feel good because all the meds are still in me and the third day is when it all bottoms out. I have to take the immune boosting shot, as I've mentioned before this shot is life saving, I am so grateful I can access it. It encourages my bone marrow to produce blood cells to bring my counts back up after they bottom out from the steroids and chemo. This shot retails for $3000. Here's what it looks like.

Last round of chemo this shot brought my white blood cell count up to 16, normal is between 3 and 11. The downside is while the bones are making the cells they ache and burn. Totally worth it for a little piece of mind and immunity to make it to the next round and battle viruses, bacteria and infection. It's just not easy.

This past week on the third day I couldn't make it walking slowly around the block without really struggling to make it home. Today I had a HIIT workout in my backyard and jumped on the trampoline for 10 minutes, cleaned the bathroom, disinfected the groceries and had 2 bubble baths. Again, none of it makes any sense.

I will say this. This time around, I felt pretty awful day 4 and 5 and 6 too. Day 4 I had the worst ever headache, and the worst part about it is...I don't really know if my terrible headache is from chemo or if it's the start of Covid. My throat was sore and I felt like I had the flu. I was taking my temperature every hour and without being painkiller free I have no idea if I have a rising fever so I have to choose between the pain meds and the piece of mind. I took a few painkillers and then let them wear off and then took my temperature and then repeated the cycle. It was a rough day, most of it spent in bed but after sleeping a little throughout the night my headache started to wane and in the morning I felt a little better. I figured if it was Covid 19 I'd have felt progressively worse.

Day 5 is when the heartburn and stomach pain started. I couldn't eat anything without feeling an aching burn in my upper abdomen, this combined with slow digestion and diarrhea was especially lovely. I have been drinking beet juice in my morning juice so when I went to the bathroom I wasn't sure if I was bleeding internally or it was just beet juice. I had no way to know and I wasn't about to go to the hospital, there is no one to call right now to ask. The medical system has shifted focus and what normally is available to cancer patients isn't available even to the sickest - and as cancer goes I'm up there. (My surgery is still a go *fingers crossed*. I still have my treatments, I still have lab appointments and my oncologist still calls me before each chemo). I have an emergency number I can call for fever, but there's a wait and it should only be used if especially serious. I don't want to take resources away from the system right now, unless I feel it's life or death. I wouldn't want to call and end up finding out it was just the beets. I figured I'd wait it out. NOT juice the beets the next day and see. I went to bed not feeling safe or relaxed or sure of anything, but that's sometimes the way it is. It's hard to describe how it feels to think you might be bleeding internally because of the way you feel, either way - it was an indication of how terrible I felt.

It was just the beets.

The next day I still felt crappy but not quite as bad. I scaled back my food intake big time and stuck to the basics. I had to drive to Toronto to get my supplements from my naturopath, they're specialty items and aren't widely available. Shipping would take too long. So I have to go. Jason insisted on coming. I prefer to do the driving because, well, just because I'm me and somethings never change. LOL. We did the return trip in under 3 hours. The city seemed so different, so suppressed. It was eerie. It made me feel a little afraid. Nothing was the same.

Around 5pm Tuesday I had what I think was a panic attack. Likely due to the painkillers, the chemo and just the general state of the planet. I actually felt like "holy shit...I might actually die...nothing is ever going to be the same...what if I spend the rest of my life in pain...and on and on...". It was awful. I feel for those who suffer from severe anxiety and panic, it was such an awful experience. At first I didn't want to take any pills to make it go away because I worried that maybe it was the pills that caused it. Eventually however, I took two lorazepam and some CBD oil and Jason talked me off the ledge. The body and mind can only handle so much. Despite my best efforts to mitigate the situation, and as Jason pointed out - I'm being poisoned every two weeks and it's the 12th week of my body and mind battling it. Add to that the Covid situation and realistically I'm surprised I hadn't cracked sooner.

We watched a car show and went to bed. I slept off the panic and woke up feeling a little better.

Yesterday I made an effort to drink even more water, and try to focus on the things I'm grateful for. I did some stretches and called my kids, the sense of dread seemed to fade and although I could still feel it lurking in the background I felt that I had a handle on it. I just had to keep focusing on what I could control, the things that are tangible, my breathing and the tree outside, little jobs around the house and my puzzle.

Jason and have been working on a 1000 piece puzzle of the Amalfi Coast. We have talked about wanting to go to Italy together, biking around and eating...we still talk about it as we do the puzzle. We've put it on a piece of plywood because it's going to take forever to complete....we worked on it together for a while and then Jason took over.

Here he is looking ever so handsome and smiling because now he can work on the puzzle in the middle of the couch, with access to all the pieces. I've said it over and over but I don't know what I'd do without him. He's been my anchor. This past week without him I would've certainly drifted out to sea and been lost.

So that was yesterday.

Today I woke up feeling OK. I told myself before I even got out of bed that if it killed me I would go outside and attempt a workout. Since the start of chemo a week hasn't passed that I haven't had a workout and I refuse to give up. So...I had a bath and soaked my bones and muscles and got dressed and went outside. I was no Chris Hemsworth but I cranked out a 24 minute HIIT workout and felt OK. I then bounced on the trampoline and stretched and looked up at the sky and felt like things are going to be OK. It's amazing what a little exercise can do. Persistence is important in trying times....the effort to just keep going makes the difference. Once you start moving, and put your body in motion things improve. This is undeniable.

I had a phone appointment with my Naturopath after this and we discussed the end of my chemo and the next phase in preparation for my surgery. I'll be starting Vitamin C infusions twice a week on April 30. I'll start with 15g (which is 15,000mg) of Vitamin C and work my way up to 75g. I have a new list of supplements which include: Modified citrus pectin, European mistletoe, CoQ10, Curcumin, Vitamin D, Vitamin A, Zinc, Selenium Omega 3, L-Glutamine, Mastica Chios, probiotics and a hand crafted detox tincture from my herbalist. I know it seems like a lot, but so is chemo and I want my system back. It's just as extensive a list as all the meds they pump into me bi-weekly so I have no qualms about the protocol.

My naturopath was encouraging and reminded me that my latest ultrasound showed my lymph nodes were appearing more normal which means that the cancer is potentially gone from them...this means I'm getting better and it's possible they won't have to take as many in the surgery. It means my survival rate is increasing. The breast lump is still there but the mastectomy will hopefully take care of that....I have reason to be hopeful. As for the pains in my stomach, she said it's possible that my duodenum (the first part of my small intestine) is eroding from the chemo, this is actually fairly common. She recommended an over the counter drug for 2-3 days (which is pretty rare for a naturopath, but why I like her integrated approach) and if the pain goes away, not to worry...if not to call her and we'll tackle it, but not to worry. I just need to keep moving forward, pulling in a natural approach to work alongside the conventional treatments that are attempting to save my life.

I felt good after the conversation and so I decided to clean the bathroom and take another bath. As I floated in the clean tub, looking down at my breasts that will soon be gone I realized that nothing is the same. This is a scary time for me and it's OK for me to have days where I'm genuinely scared and sad about the state of it all.

I also looked down at my feet and gave thanks for them. As long as I keep putting one in front of the other and moving them everyday, a new normal will develop. There have been some articles lately comparing cancer to the current situation around the world.

I don't know what it would be like to not have cancer and just be facing the fear of Covid 19 but if it is anything like having cancer, the best advice I could give, is to not get too wrapped up in tomorrow. Be grateful for what you can still do today, sure it's not as much as you're used to but it's not nothing. You can still move, move your feet and work your mind. You can still laugh and cry. You are still alive today.

Dark moments will come, after all we're only human. Humans have been through so much, the human body can withstand and recover from so much. There's always hope. Even in the darkest of times. So I pulled myself out of the bath, toweled off and put on my new scarf and got on with it.

Here I am. Still hangin' in there. We all are. Everything is going to be OK.