Yesterday I got a call from the doctor’s office to confirm a chemo appointment scheduled for today. “Don’t I have chemo every three weeks?” I asked, confused. “I don’t have chemo until next week.” The schedule did indeed say that I had chemo slated for today, so either I was confused or the appointment was wrong. I asked the scheduling person to confirm with my oncologist’s nurse and waited for a call back.
In the meantime, I did some calculations and mental rescheduling. I have a friend in town this week and my mom in town in two weeks, so the scheduling wouldn’t be ideal. However, chemo every two weeks would mean I would be done much sooner—by the end of June, in fact. I had just calculated my new end date and was looking forward to having chemo over with when I got the call that it was an administrative error and that I do have chemo every three weeks. They rescheduled me for next week. I was a little bit relieved but also a little disappointed. If this chemo works, then I’m not done until the end of July.
I’m often waiting. Five years ago, I was waiting for the end of my lymphoma chemo. Then I was waiting until after my stem cell transplant, then waiting to recover. I’ve waited for chemo rounds to finish, for hospital releases, for surgery recoveries. Then things will be better.
This time, it’s a little different. My cancer is more of a chronic disease. I won’t ever be done with this. But I’ve also learned that there’s no magic time when things will be perfect. Sometimes I’ve even looked back on the times when I was waiting for things to get better, knowing in hindsight that those times weren’t so bad.
I’ve often waited for something to fall into place, even before illness. It’s easy to think “once X happens, then everything will fall into place.” Once I’m done with school, once I have a relationship, once I get my finances in order, once I get in shape, once I meet this deadline, once I make more money…etc. Sometimes it never happens. A lot of times, it does happen, but by then, something else has come up. Things hardly ever fall into place all at once. When they do, I’m often too wary of it being a calm before a storm or worried the other shoe is going to drop. Though I try to savor it, I’m also keeping an eye on the horizon for gathering clouds.
This time, I’m going to try to enjoy the good days without focusing so much on an end point. I don’t want to jinx myself, and I have days when I feel a little meh, but I have days when I feel better than I have in months. Diarrhea for four months (one third of a year!) has been pretty rough. Savor your solid poops. The chemo has aggravated my neuropathy a bit, and I sometimes get a little dizzy and sometimes my stomach is off, but I feel as if I’m improving a little bit, and more importantly, it’s given me a little bit of hope for a window of wellness. I need to keep in mind that August isn’t going to be a magical end point.
With the chemo, I know I don’t feel well the week following treatment and then I progressively feel better until the next round. I expect, as with the other times, there will be cumulative effects so I might be a little run down by August. Plus there are the unexpected things like possible infections. However, I know that I should savor any time I feel better and that along with the low points, there hopefully will be good as well.