The Struggle

It’s hard to be chronically ill. To live every day with a sickness that you don’t know if it will spare you or take your life. This new chemo is harder on me that the previous chemo. Before with the carbo/gemzar I still had some semblance of a life while going through treatment. While I may not have felt stellar, I could still go to work, the store, get around easily. Not so with ixempra. It takes everything out of me leaving a shell of a person that is just trying to survive one more day. I am in chronic pain from the shots to boost my white count. They leave my bones aching. Ache isn’t really the right word, because it implies something manageable and livable. This is an ache down to the core of my bones that threaten to bring me to a puddle of tears on a regular basis. I take pain pills to control the pain, but I have found that in order to adequately control the pain I have to take more pain pills that I want or can to live coherently. So, it’s either be pain free and in a drug induced fog, or live with the pain that never goes away.

The shortness of breath continues, although now that I know it is anxiety related I try to just relax through it and hope it will go away. They have given me ativan that helps with both nausea and shortness of breath, but it leaves me so tired that I can’t hardly function. So I am lying either in bed or on the couch, because it zaps all my strength. So again I am given the choice of living with the shortness of breath or surviving through a drug induced haze reminiscent of the sixties.

As I sit here, the darkness threatens to overwhelm me. I have lost so much in the last few weeks in addition to the difficult course that this treatment has taken that sometimes I wonder how I’ll make it through. I struggle with the decisions that must be made over working and benefits and wonder what the future holds. I try not to dwell on what happens next, but those thoughts sometimes overtake my mind and I dissolve into sobs. I try very hard to keep my focus on the positive and when I do, I can stave away the darkness for awhile, but it is always there, lurking around a corner, waiting to pounce at the first opportunity.

I pray that I’ll start feeling better soon which always helps my attitude and that I can get back to some normalcy in my life, although I don’t know for sure what “normal” is anymore. I await the next round on March 11th with great trepidation, for I know what this chemo brings, but have hope that the CT scan following that round will give a positive twist to my life that has been lacking in recent months.

For now I just persevere on through; one step, one moment at a time. For that is all I can handle. I tread with great care, waiting not for tomorrow, for I know the difficulties that it brings, but for that day in the future when I hear the words “all clear.” For me, that day can’t come soon enough.