I just don't like feeling sick, I don't like feeling like .. like not me. It's gotten to the point where even thinking of chemotherapy makes me nauseas, where even passing close to the hospital makes me sick. Literally, sick to my stomach. I know that it's all Pavlovian in nature, psychosomatic if you will, but the effects are the same nonetheless. Nausea.
I'm so tired. My tiredness extends far deeper than just being sleepy or the like; it's like a fatigue to the very core of my being, like my body just barely has enough energy to go on day after day. Almost everything requires much more energy than I have available in my reserves; I'm always pushing my own boundaries when it comes to any sort of activity, even ones that I enjoy. That makes sense, of course. Why would the fact that I enjoy an activity make it any easier on my body to perform it? Mind over matter, right? Yeah. Right.
The clumps of hair in my shower get worse every day. I didn't think it would be that noticeable, but it is. Luckily the way that my hair has been falling out has been nothing more than a general thinning all over. The hair on my head is not the only place it's going away, it's pretty much body-wide.
It's just disturbing when I see it actually falling out. When I pull off a black shirt, I can see all the hair that was pulled out just by the shirt rubbing against my head. And we're not talking just a few strands of hair here, either; each time I take a shirt off, I lose an average of two dozen hairs from what I can see.
The fact that I always feel sick right after eating makes it very difficult for me to want to eat. Luckily I've been able to force myself to eat no matter what so far, but I have a feeling that as my treatment continues that may change. I've go to keep forcing myself to eat no matter what, seeing as how I lost 13 pounds in June, and I've only gained back 11 of that. Even once I've gained back the weight that I lost, I have to keep eating, keep forcing myself. I've always been underweight, and that's not good in general, but especially for me now.
I wish I could describe how I feel phsyically. Emotions aren't as difficult to verbalize, but since this is a type of physical discomfort I've never felt before, it's quite hard to describe. I really think only a fellow cancer patient that went through chemotherapy would understand. It's shitty, because when someone asks me how I'm feeling and I respond with "tired," they frequently respond with something along the lines of "I know what you mean," and the first thought that goes through my head is "No, you don't."
Tired is merely the easiest way I can describe it. Nausea is just so much simpler than trying to convey that I am quite literally in pain most of the day each and every day. A headache to me is not just a headache, it's a pounding, throbbing beast that extends into my entire body, causing a chain-reaction of pain and discomfort that .. fuck. How I feel is truly indescribable, far more powerful than I could possible verbalize.
And it fucking sucks, because I was always one of those people that never really got headaches, got sick, felt nauseas, et cetera. Rarely have I ever had the flu, or gotten a cold. I've never had bronchitis, and I've only had strep throat once in my life. I used to get ear infections when I was younger, but that stopped a long time ago. Bug bites don't bother me, neither does poison oak.
So of course, my adult life of relative ease as far as health is concerned finally decided to catch up to me. Here, have some fucking cancer.
Today would qualify as a bad day, as far as my psyche is concerned, I suppose. I think it's because I've been thinking about the fact that tomorrow I have to go in for my blood tests and then my chemotherapy on Tuesday.
And thinking about how much I just want to be normal again.
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