Friday, February 15, 2013

Chemo Days

So, beginning September 1st 2010 Dan began chemotherapy.
At this point we lived in the hotel and space was extremely limited.

Mind you my only exposure to chemo was what I saw on tv things. I expected vomiting, lots of it, exhaustion, paleness, and hair falling out til bald.
I got the exhaustion and the paleness and some hair falling out but he never went bald from it. He never severely threw up although once in a blue moon he did.
I couldnt go with him to these sessions because of the boys. Had no babysitter so he went alone. The first med they gave him he had a horrid reaction to so they had to switch.
He felt awful and his personality slowly changed. It seemed every small annoying habit he had increased into a ginormous annoyance. Like it quadrupled in size.

I had joined a group on a mothers board that dealt mostly with women who were cancer patients/survivors. When I asked what to expect with chemo the two most vocal were kind enough to tell me two things that have served me well in surviving this experience: his tastes will change, literally, stuff he liked before(food) he wont anymore. And the most important one....he will become a raging bitch. They told me how lucky they were that their spouses had stuck around after the arguing they'd caused over nothing and the bitchiness with which they lived life during and after the chemo process. Its usually known as part of the "chemo brain" that happens to all who do chemo. They change in temprement and personality and get really forgetful.

Dan got the bitchies and forgetfulness(mind you this lasts forever). His food tastes changed but not horribly like I was expecting but his personality changed and he did become bitchy over the dumbest things. Got to the point where you just never knew what mood to expect so you lived with a breathe held and on the edge of your seat til you knew. And even in knowing the mood could change in a moment. Ive lived that way ever since and its an awful way to live but such is life right now.

We began a "new normal" that wasnt pleasant but was what it was. Kids were used to daddy being gone all the time and now he was home all the time and sick to boot so they never knew how to act or react and they still dont many days.

Chemo didnt work. It didnt take long(couple of months) for his spleen to start enlarging and, continues to do so til its below his waistline at this point in time, and his platelet count to go down the crapper. When your platelets are too low you cant do the chemo because your immunity is at a bad point. Chemo kills it enough but if your body cant make enough platelets then you are really screwed. So it got to the point that he could only do a full chemo dose maybe once a month instead of the weekly he had been doing. Then it got to the point where a month or two would go by with nothing and finally a year into chemo time they stopped altogether because his platelets and spleen size were just too bad off.

So September 2011 they stopped trying the chemo and kinda left us blowing in the wind with stuff that could be done. Radiation was always out as an option because they didnt know the true source of the cancer so that left little options and his doctors didnt try hard enough to care.

End of September 2011 we moved to Utah because this is where I am from and my family and closest friends are here. We wanted the boys and I to have a good support system for when the time came that Dan was gone. We knew it was coming, the doctors had told us as much as had Dans instinct...so we prepared for that day.


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