I have completed my final week of prescribed chemotherapy. We now enter the “wait and see” phase, where we will find out if we have successfully eradicated the cancer or not. It will be a couple of weeks until we know. Again, I seem to be on the fast track – I know of others who have to wait 6 months before they knew if the chemotherapy worked or not. It is surprising how much different the treatment is for each type of cancer.
As for my condition, this past week has been very difficult. From about Wednesday of last week, things have been rough. This time I am not only very weak and fatigued, but I have been very sick as well. It has been tough to keep food down, and we are a little worried about dehydration – but my wife keeps forcing me to drink fluids. I quite literally haven’t left the bedroom since Friday, and today (Tuesday) is the first time that I am sitting up in bed for more than a few moments at a time. I have been sleeping quite a bit, but it is not easy to get comfortable – my body aches all over.
They tell me that I should not expect to rebound too quickly from the treatments. Since it took 7 weeks to drag my body down to rock bottom, it could take just about as long to completely recover. My plan is to take the rest of this week very slowly, and not try to jump up and move around too quickly. I hope to be back to semi-normal activities next week, including finally getting back to the office for at least a couple of half days. If all goes well, I will be feeling back to normal before my favorite holiday – Thanksgiving. And, of course, I am really looking forward to finally getting to a BYU football game this season – so far, I have given away all of my tickets. As long as I can make it to the BYU – Utah game, all will be well…