Padded and Swaddled

The course that my body takes in recovering from a chemo treatment isn't a linear one, like you'd expect from a virus or an injury. I know that I begin to regain strength on days 3-5, and then am plunged into hell on days 6 and 7. This is my pattern on AC chemo, but after my next and last round of AC, I'm sure a new pattern will emerge for the subsequent four rounds of Taxol.

Chemo dulls my senses, nearly all of them, and the effect peaks on the weekend. Swollen with 6 pounds of fluid retention, my legs feel too heavy, my glasses too narrow for my puffy face. My eyes and nose run continuously as my irritated tear ducts try to compensate, so my sight is blurred. My temperature drops, so I wear my soft knit chemo cap around the house, which happens to cover my ears and block out sounds. My sense of taste goes away, things don't smell right, and my touch is distorted. When I run my nails over my skin, I don't feel the sensation as sharply as I should. My lower back and hips ache deep within the bones. The effect of all this is like being swaddled, and the sensory deprivation leads to a strong feeling of detachment from my physical self, with a corresponding effect upon my mental state. I reach for touchstones to make me feel grounded, but I can't find any, and so I drift. For two days.

When all this peaks, I'm isolated from my environment, both internally and externally. I can no longer sense hunger and satiety, nor my own state of wellness. I must monitor myself from an external perspective to make sure I am okay. I eat by the clock and write down what I eat, so that I know I am fed. I drink tons of water and pee every few minutes. I check my temperature because the feeling of malaise is so strong that I don't know if I'm coming down with an infection. If I step out of the house to get the mail, I visually scan myself first, to be sure that I'm dressed and unexposed. I have little automatic feedback for all of the ways I usually know myself, so I have to check with an act of will.

It's scary to lose sense of my own wellbeing, to lie on a couch for long stretches of time, not sleeping, just floating. The cats come for food, the phone rings, I go through the motions of living, but I'm not real. I am my only touchstone, but an unreliable one at those times. Then the fear seeps in and takes me to dark places.

What I know, and only because it has happened twice now, is that on the morning of day 8 the figurative swaddling drops away and I begin to feel connected to my world once again. The relief I feel is huge, even more so because I've been so unsure it will come at all. I write this down today for my future self two weeks from now during round 4. Day 8 will come, I think, and it will be golden.