General Update: Into the Homestretch

I've noted this below in the main text, but for those who skim and may miss this, I've chosen for this to be my last post until I am completely done with chemotherapy, likely sometime in September. I'm not Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, but I do want to manage expectations by giving everyone a heads up.

Over a year ago when I first learned I would have roughly fourteen months of chemotherapy to get through, I truly felt like a year was going to get wiped off the calendar of my life, that somehow it was just all going to get sucked into a black hole of some kind, never to be seen again or remembered. Remember how those first couple years with COVID we all had this weird sense of time? Our worlds had been uprooted and time somehow both simultaneously chewed us up and spit us out, leaving us disoriented, and yet at the same time, time still carried on.

The final three cycles of chemotherapy are stretching out before me. Someone asked the other day if I felt like the time had gone by fast or if it had felt like an eternity. I had to think about it. In some ways it's flown by, but it also hasn't felt like it's been moving at a total snail's pace either. It's just - been - this weird sense of time I've been living in for the last fifteen months, this vortex of vagueness. 

I am eager to reach the end of treatment and have a life that doesn't exist in twenty-eight day increments. When we were children, we measured life by school years and summer breaks. In college, we measured life by semesters and spring breaks. And then in adulthood, it's just this gaping openness with no distinct markers, other than perhaps by jobs, children's birthdays, or anniversaries. But as someone who has cancer, I have marked my existence in this past year by cycles: 

• Cycle 1: "Cycle 12 is sooooo far away." 
• Cycle 4: "Yuck." 
• Cycle 6: "Halfway there!"
• Cycle 8: "Absolute misery. Good Lord Almighty have mercy." 
• Cycle 9: "Best one yet. Only three more to go!"

I am eager to not be hyperaware of how much water I'm drinking in the course of a single day or keeping a daily log of symptoms. I am eager to keep making plans. 

My most recent MRI was earlier this week, and it showed that the tumor is stable. I met with the neuro-onc this afternoon, and I told him much of what I had reported in my last post: This has been by far the best cycle. I feel like I've been bursting at the seams with energy and productivity. I've been cranking through my to do lists, and it's felt good to have such a long stretch of days where I have felt consistently well. I had an ah-ha! moment a couple weeks back when I realized the anti-nausea patch I wore through all five of the medication days in cycle eight was actually what made me feel so miserable. For a supposed anti-nausea medication, it made my nausea worse. I tried it again at the beginning of this cycle and within an hour of wearing it, I felt side effects settling in. I lasted all of eight hours wearing it. Shortly after I took it off, all of the side effects dissipated.

As I look to this final homestretch of cycles, I've given a lot of thought to what I want them to look like. I have felt a strong prompting from the Holy Spirit that I need to pull back from some things, while leaning hard into others. 

I want to continue to focus on overall health so that when I do reach the end of chemo, I'm already in a place to rebound quickly from any lingering side effects. I've got a few appointments set up with a functional medicine dietician and a functional medicine nurse to sort out some optional testing I chose to do, which traditional medicine wouldn't normally consider.

I'm going to continue to focus on physical strength and recovery. I'm still going to the gym once per week and will do so until the end of treatment, at minimum. From there, I'll assess whether I'm in a place where I can handle going back to the group training sessions. 

I've got some home projects I want to get in order, including painting some rooms and sprucing up my yard.

There's an assortment of other tasks on the to-do list, and in light of that, I will not be posting anymore updates to the blog until I am completely done with chemo, which will likely be sometime in September. Consider it a form of hibernation, only in summer instead of winter. As a good friend noted, though, it will not be a time of isolation, but it will be a time for separation from a few things, including these blog updates. If you've been along for the entire ride, then you'll remember I took a break last August after I finished radiation and was on break from chemo. Think of it like that, only longer. Soon enough the fat bears in Katmai will be making an appearance and they can keep you entertained. Around late June, they usually start surfacing, and you can keep tabs on Explore.org's webcams for when that goes live.

This doesn't mean you can't contact me or reach out to me. It just means the public-facing side of this kerfuffle called cancer is an area where I'm hitting pause for a time. So, if you have my personal contact info anyway, don't feel like you can reach out via text, phone call, email, or snail mail.

I personally am praying a lot here lately that God would grant me eyes that see, ears that ear, a mind that trust, and a heart that obeys. The Secretariat prayer from last June's update is still in my mind, as odd as that one may seem. I want to get stronger and faster through each of these remaining cycles. I welcome your prayers on those matters, as well. I'm also praying there would be no side effects in the remaining cycles and that I would manage my time well.

Until the fall, may the bears be with you.