Chemo Day 11

A former river otter at Paxton Gate

I felt great all day yesterday and also today except for being a little tired from yesterday! According to the handouts nurse David gave me, the nadir (lowest blood counts) most often starts on day 10, the day I felt best of all. It's days 10-14 for one of the chemo drugs, and days 15-21 for the other one.

I wrote to Dr. T. about the peripheral neuropathy and he asked if I am taking the glutamine. I thought glutamine is to help with the side effects of the shots I ended up not taking. Turns out it's nothing to do with that. D'oh! The numbness has decreased since Friday and luckily this morning Shantinayaka came up on his way to Rainbow so picked me up some....hope it helps. 

A tomato plant growing
in a crack in the sidewalk

...Just talked for an hour with Denise in Vermont, a Buddhist and three-time "cancer thriver". (She was on a landline which was GREAT in terms of sound!) It was very enjoyable. One thing is that I was kind of assuming my nadir would be in the middle of the 21 days. She says hers was toward the end of the cycle. 
Which would explain why I feel so good right now. It's funny I keep surprising people and myself by not looking like Meryl Streep in a cancer movie. Denise said each time you 'come back' from your nadir/the fatigue, you don't come back quite as far... 


She talked about how important exercise has been for her and how there are now studies supporting that. She suggested rather than thinking of these months as "one day at a time", rather, "one nap at a time" which sounds much better. 


Paulette is arriving shortly and tomorrow I think we will drive to Sebastopol to pick up some herbs prescribed by Misha...