This week is the start of my fifth round of chemotherapy treatments. I spent all of Monday in the infusion center, getting the stronger medication that’s part of my new treatment regimen.

I usually don’t feel too bad after a day of treatment (the fatigue usually comes a few days later), but this one was pretty rough. I spent the first couple of hours feeling an urgent need to vomit, and my head was throbbing. Laying down to rest around 6pm resulted in me finally waking up about twelve hours later feeling a good bit better, the headache and nausea gone.

As of tonight (Wednesday), I’m back to the usual symptoms of fatigue and lower leg pain. The fatigue really is something else… it doesn’t matter how much rest or sleep I get, I just have absolutely no energy. I had to walk down to the basement for something yesterday, and even that left me out of breath and weak.

Like this, only 80% less cute

The lower leg pain isn’t that bad at the moment, I think it’s mostly from swelling due to water retention. It feels like everything below my knees is attached to weights, which makes walking difficult and keeps me off-balance.

This is the second time I’ve gone through the new treatments, and if it’s anything like the first, this weekend is when the fatigue and pain will really hit me, so we’ll see.

Mentally I’m doing okay. I had a talk with my oncologist before my chemo on Monday, and he was still mostly encouraging. While he couldn’t rule out the new pain I’ve been having in my left leg as a new metastasis, he thinks that it’s far more likely to be pain due to bone marrow in my pelvis rebuilding.

I have some pretty big tests scheduled for October 16th, which will determine a lot of what happens next. If those tests still show some remaining cancer, then we’ll basically have to start over but with the addition of radiation treatments, which doesn’t sound very fun.

If the tests show that I’m in full remission, then we’ll move forward with bone marrow transplant, which is its own set of worries. If you want to sleep tonight, do yourself a favor and don’t research the possible side-effects of Graft vs. Host Disease. It’s not nearly as funny as Arrested Development made it seem.

Like this, only 80% more blood