Week Eleven of Chemotherapy
I’m in the process of getting my final round of chemotherapy as I type this reflection on last week. It feels surreal and at the same time like nothing is really changing in my life yet because I still have to come back for Herceptin next week and then will be coming back every three weeks for maintenance doses of Herceptin until next October. Last week wasn’t that bad in terms of side effects from the chemo with the exception of getting some of the worst heartburn I’ve ever experienced in my life for two of the days. I have never experienced anything that bad in terms of heartburn and now I have a whole new level of sympathy for my poor husband who lives with non stop stomach problems.
Last week, while everyone else was ringing in the new year from atop various mountains in the northeast, I was snuggled up in bed feeling the effects of yet another round of chemotherapy. Thankfully although I spent the majority of days three and four in bed, I didn’t feel completely atrocious. My taste is basically nonexistent on days three and four and I have almost no appetite so eating is somewhat of a struggle but I’ve continued to maintain a consistent weight throughout treatment so I must be doing something right.
On Sunday, day five, instead of exercising like I usually do, I just relaxed and gave my body more time to recuperate. Now that the end of this phase is in sight, I have started to focus on getting back into redlining and I spent a lot of the day Sunday working on planning out my hikes. It feels strange to be ending this part of treatment soon, like I don’t know what to do with myself now that I’m no longer going to be living my entire life around the effects of chemotherapy, and focusing on hiking really has helped me feel like I have something to look forward to. Not that I’m not looking forward to being done with chemo, but it’s hard to imagine what my day-to-day life will look like in two weeks when I’m no longer getting weekly treatments.
The big news this past week was that I started working on redlining Southern NH Monday. When I realized that I would be pretty severely affected by chemotherapy, I decided that instead of only redlining Northern NH, I could also redline the south. The planning of these hikes has given me something to focus on in the past month or so, and rather than waiting until I was done chemotherapy to start redlining, I just couldn’t wait, and decided to start this past week. I started off on a short three and a half mile hike with my mom on Monday and even though it was a really short hike with minimal elevation gain, it felt amazing to be back in my element, working towards my goal. Tuesday I went out again, only solo, and boy it was tough completing the six mile hike with 1,666’ elevation gain. It sounds quite pathetic to me that I struggled to complete such a short hike with so little elevation gain in under four hours, but looking at my blood counts today, I suppose I can give myself a little bit of a break. With the extra day in this round, I went out on Wednesday for a four mile walk with my mom, bringing my total mileage to thirteen miles in three days. That seems so miniscule compared to what I used to do just a few months ago, but every one of those miles wasn’t easy for me and I’m proud of myself for continuing to hike despite being in my eleventh week in a row of chemotherapy.
Now, with only one more round to go, I am very curious to see what it feels like to be normal again. I can’t imagine what it is like to have normal energy, normal blood counts, a clear mind, and to not feel like I’m carrying around twenty pounds of water weight. I just applied to the doctoral program at UNH for the fall, am excited to be working with Backpacking Routes on writing up trail profiles and blog posts, and although I’m technically only halfway through treatment now, I am through the hardest part of treatment and am very excited to get back out into the mountains more in the upcoming months. One more week to go...
