Chemo and Me - A Love/Hate Relationship

I have been on a pill form of chemotherapy since the day I found out I had the Leukemia bug. Chemotherapy is not what I thought it would be. I always pictured losing my hair and throwing up all the time. This is often the case but not all chemo is the same I have found. Chemotherapy is pretty much just a blanket term for any chemical treatment of disease.

     Chemotherapy - the treatment of disease by means of chemicals that have a specific toxic effect upon the disease-producing microorganisms or that selectively destroy cancerous tissue (Dictionary.com)

For me, the love part of chemo is simply that it keeps me from being dead. I like that part man, I really do! But aside from the staying alive part, I am pretty much a hater.
 

With my chemo I don't lose my hair which, at least for me, was the one thing I was looking forward to. Pretty much everything else I ever knew about chemo has come true plus a bunch of little things that I personally wasn't aware of.

Let's take my guts for example, all of them, my entire abdominal cavity, burns all the time. Its not literally like fire but more like really bad heart burn in your whole guts! Malox, Protonix, the little purple pill and all kinds of other drugs don't do squat for it. Distraction is the only thing that helps. 

Feeling tired and weak all the time is because of the chemo killing red blood cells along with the cancerous and normal white blood cells. This is compounded with what they call cellular debri from the mass genocide of some 200,000 points off of my white blood cell count (thats millions and millions of slaughtered cancer cells! GET BACK!!)


Mouth sores are something I wasn't aware of but have discovered they are all too real. The above chemo definition says it selectively destroys cancerous tissue, but more accurately it selectively destroys tissue. Cells that multiply fast in this case. Mouth cells divide real fast (like blood cells do) and so when I brush my teeth, my gums bleed. I mean bleed! At the base of every tooth there is jacked skin all the way around each and every tooth! If I brush without toothpaste it tastes like I took a shot of A- (my blood type). It looks like I have gingivitis but only right after I brush. I don't really notice it the rest of the day because the bleeding isn't caused by infection or neglect but my selective tissue destruction! Now, the little sores all over my tongue constantly make themselves known throughout the day!

My joints ache. When people ask me how I feel I usually tell them I feel like a really cool old, old man. When old guys describe how they feel I relate. I'm tired, I ache all the time, and I don't have the energy I used to (now if only I would start losing my hair). It is appropriate that my main hobby over the last four years has been raising bonsai trees. You have to have your chi right if you are going to win a fight with cancer. 

As for throwing up all the time, that is a reality but fortunately they have some sweet nausia meds these days. I started throwing up at the hospital and before I could finish the nurse was squirting something in my IV that ended my throwing up days right then and there! Grateful; I am just grateful for drugs! 

Next is the spleen. Mine is around 5 times its normal size and the chemo made it swell a bit more. So, if I have eaten well (Luckily, I don't usually feel like eating at all!) and I yawn It feels like I got hit in the stomach. When the kids do get me in the gut (in a way that used to not really be noticeable) it feels like I got kicked in the stomach . . . twice. I have discovered something about that horrible ache that lingers for a while after you get hit in the stomach. it is your spleen that causes that feeling. I have to be careful with my spleen getting hit says the doctor, because if it ruptures then I would likely die of internal bleeding before I got to the hospital. It will take 6 months to a year to go back to normal so if you see me around in the near future don't play.

Chemo has jacked my sleep habits way up! I used to be the kind of person who hit the pillow and was out in seconds and could easily sleep for 12 or 14 hours if allowed to. Now I lay there for a while and have freaking weird, detailed dreams. Some of them are cool (like I had a little helicoptor in one that was so awesome! I could do things in it you can't do in real life like fly into buildings, etc. Then one where I could kick my feet so fast and strong in the water that I planed out on my belly like a boat and I could catch speed boats and stuff and I didn't get tired doing it.) most of them are horrific dreams though and I don't even want to recount or think of them ever again. I get up to pee like 500 times a night for some reason (old man) and my body pops and cracks all the way to the thrown. there are other little pains and things that guys would want to hear but they aren't approproate for the general blogging audience. 

Basically, I am tired, I feel weak and my guts burn all the time and I basically feel creepy inside all the time. Plus I don't even get to lose my hair. But after all this and I am assured more to come, the truth about suffering is this: God doesn't look down and say, "Ooooo! Cancer, ouch! That is gonna stink!" He cries when I cry and laughs with me, He hurts with me. Even though Jesus didn't have Leukemia, somehow, in a way we won't understand until the next life He knows not only what it is like to have this disease, He knows what its like to be a husband and father of four in 2009 who can't work in his trade as a tile contractor for a bit. He knows what it is like to be me! And more than that, He, unlike any other being you will ever meet, knows exactly what it is like to be you. When no one understands what you are going through, He does. When you can't stand any longer, He can stand and carry you. He has a body. I know this because He was resurected and showed himself to many afterwards to prove it. And because of him and only Him you and I will be resurrected also and cancer will not be a part of my resurrected body. At the last day He will not shake our hands but will embrace us in a way we have never experienced before. We won't hurt, we will finally find rest and the Lord will say, "Well done thou good and faithful servant!" I can only imagine. 

But for me, that time is a long way off. There is more He wants me to do here on earth. I don't know why cancer was in the cards for me but as surprised as I was to find out, it was no surprise to the Lord. I only hope I can learn what he wants me to learn through this and do what he wants me to do with the experience. I pray that my family and our fatih will be stronger because of this and our power to influence for good magnified. I hope I can at least be as grand a friend as so many of you have been to me.