After a two mile walk and an hour of yoga I am now sitting in bed with a face mask on (not the virus prevention kind). I’m trying to get the blood flowing, joints greased, and get some color back in my tired and gray face. Lively jazz piano music is winding it’s way up the stairs from the speakers downstairs. Benjamin is humming while preparing dinner. I hear a knife chopping on the wood cutting board and I smell freshly cut vegetables. I’m so happy that he has started to enjoy cooking. That’s one of the positive things that has come out of this frog eating period. He has not cooked any frogs yet though…

I’m now preparing for the last infusion and a two week dose of pills. I’m envisioning tomorrow with mixed feelings. I am so incredibly happy that this is the last dose and I can finally mentally get ready to enjoy the view from the last summit. I have however cried a few tears of anxiety today. My body remembers vividly the feeling I get when sitting in the infusion chair and the sensation spreads throughout my body while I think of it. I’m shaking my head and taking a very deep breath to cut off that feeling. I hope the next round of tears are tears of joy because these nine months of strain are over.

Before each new cycle I’ve tried to do some chores that are hard to do while the drugs are working it’s way through my system. I’m glad I’ve had four or five pretty good days this week. Bed linen and towels are clean and so are my clothes. I love the smell of clean clothes and going to bed in freshly cleaned bed linen gives me much pleasure – it’s so refreshing. In addition to doing some house chores I’m now preparing my body in various ways just to feel a little bit better. I’m about to step into the shower to wash my hair and shave. Luckily I have not lost more hair than normal the last two months. The hair is growing slower though. I’ll also scrub my skin and after the shower I’ll finish off with lotions and oils for this and that. Chemo is killing rapid growing cells leaving a trail of sore skin in several areas. My fingertips are slowly losing the normal fingerprints and opening iPhone, iPad and Mac is not a quick and easy step any longer. The skin is getting pretty hard and rough and my right thumb has shed at least two layers of skin and is so very sore. My fingernails have started to grow downwards. Weird. Maybe because the inflexible skin under my fingernails forces the nail down. The bottom of my feet have also developed calluses, but luckily no blisters yet. The pain in my feet has slowly gotten more faint. It’s good to know that my body can fix itself pretty quickly the days I’m not on chemo. 

I’m going into this last cycle with a few lingering side effects. Besides from sore fingertips and feet I have a sore throat and several sore spots in my mouth. My eyes are also constantly sore. They feel like I’ve spent hours in a heavily chlorinated pool. My nose is sore and constantly runny. It’s the same sensation as if I’m out in very cold dry winter air. I do hope these side effects don’t get much worse the coming two weeks but they very well might – or maybe not. This will anyway be the last two weeks of pain, fatigue and uncomfortableness. 

This too shall pass and I’ll soon get back to as normal as I can hope to get. The water in the shower is now the right temperature, and I’m about to jump in. After my shower and lotion and oil regimen, I will enjoy Benjamin’s dinner. Then I will hit the couch for the first time today and watch some tv before I head back to bed. Hopefully my workout and home spa will give me a good nights sleep so I can handle tomorrow reasonably well.