Been putting off writing about my 5th chemotherapy cycle to the point it’s due to write about my 6th chemotherapy cycle. I know right… #procrastination
Liver working too hard was a big news for me. It got my demotivated. But here’s a bigger highlight: I failed my blood test at the end of the cycle. It’s the first time I failed my blood test and was denied chemotherapy so I could not carry on with my 6th cycle on time.
It definitely caught me by surprise because I was feeling all fine. In fact, I barely felt the side effects that I used to experience: finger cramp, eye pain, jaw pain. Instead, I had bouts of diarrhea a few times a day right after being constipated during chemo. At first I thought I irritated my system by overeating but later learned from doctor that it’s likely to be side effect from the chemo drugs.
Another new side effect I experienced was pain at my lower right abdomen. I’ve never felt such pain before. It’s not my surgery site. But there’s just this persistent discomfort and pain. Haven’t solved the mystery yet. My oncologist said it’s not a known side effect from my FOLFOX chemo regime. The nurses said chemo drug may cause me to be more sensitive to pain, normally at surgery site but it’s not my surgery site. A medical student friend said there’s possibility the area I felt the pain is not the area that’s actually hurting. Whatever it is, I’m supposed to write to my surgeon to check with him but I haven’t. I also suspect that the pain is correlated to my stress level.
Another thing was that I was bruising a lot. It looked like I’ve been abused a little. I just had to knock myself against something slightly hard and I’d get a bruise. That’s the sign that my platelets were low.
I even got burned from my Fitbit Charge HR’s heart rate sensor! It left a rectangular burned spot on my arm and so I’ve stopped wearing the fitness tracker on daily basis.
Back to me failing my blood test, I can’t even recall if I’ve failed any exam in life before; except medical exams. It was devastating. I always say going through chemotherapy is a love-hate relationship. You hate it that you’re drugging yourself but you hate it also that you’re not allowed to drug yourself. It’s a little complicated.
I went to hospital on my birthday (it’s a Tuesday) for blood test. Got a call from hospital later that day about the blood test result. My platelets and white blood cells were low. I returned to hospital on Friday for another blood test to see if I was ready for chemotherapy. But it turned out that my platelets were still not high enough and surprisingly, my white blood count dropped even further to the point it’s dangerously low. I received an injection (read: pinching pain!) to boost my white blood cells production and returned to hospital on Tuesday for the 6th chemotherapy. That’s the story of how my 2-week chemo became 3 weeks long.
Moving on… Some of the other highlights of my 5th cycle were: I officially turned 25, RK and I went for a staycation over a weekend, I wore heels for the first time post-surgery, and RK and I attended a wedding reception.
Weeee
LOOOOOL
Weeee
LOOOOOL