Ailments

Day eight of this cycle and I am still spending most of the day in bed. I feel so weak I can’t perform any of the normal daily activities without getting breathless and exhausted. Now I understand what fatigue really is. The worst thing is that the tiredness doesn’t go away even if I rest the whole day. Luckily the bone and joint pain is almost gone and I am left only with some muscle pain. It is interesting how pain can influence my emotional state, from Sunday to Tuesday, when the pain was almost unbearable, I thought it was never going to end and I was convinced I was getting worse. I felt very down and pessimistic. But, thanks to my selective memory, a great quality in this business, I can’t remember anymore how it felt like to be in pain.

It isn’t just the fatigue that is bothering me. Chemotherapy is destroying my whole digestive system: from a sore mouth (I have huge mouth ulcers that make eating quite a challenge) to nausea, constipation followed by diarrhoea, heartburn, indigestion, loss of appetite, colic and sensitivity to smells and tastes, everything is contributing to my general feeling of being unwell.

On top of this, I lost my nostrils’ hair which is very annoying. I never really appreciated how useful they were. Now I have a constant runny nose and a sore throat.

I didn’t want to mention it because it makes me really sad, but my eyebrows and eyelashes are getting thinner and thinner. Panic level: really really high!

And, to put a cherry on top of my cake, I have a verruca on my right foot which is taking advantage of my weakened immune system to grow. Just great!