The Down Points

The smell of lemons surprisingly brings me back to sanity. My dad bought me a single lemon to help ward off/distract my nose with the heightened sense of smell I’ve acquired. The past few days have been pretty rough. I’ve been lying in a comatose-like state in bed all day, sleeping time away … today is my first back on the laptop. 

So what have I been up to? Lots of non-stop vomiting. Tons of nausea. Extreme fatigue. I didn’t eat for six days. Everything I tried to get down would just come right back up. Pounding headaches. No appetite. Food no longer holds its former, enticing allure. It’s my body’s natural response to the chemotherapy. I haven’t gained any sense of relief yet until today …. in moments and pieces of times where I can catch a breath and take a break from all the medicine and drugs they input into my body. My doctors wanted to perform a spinal tap on me a few days ago, but once they saw how much I was struggling, they took pity on me and decided to delay the procedure for a few days.

Strangely enough, I’ve been having dreams about running errands like any other normal person every night. Things like going to the grocery store to pick up a box of strawberries. Or turning the door knob to my college apartment. Or even writing essays! My mind is strong and active, but my body otherwise. 

They finally gave me medicinal marijuana after trying all sorts of powerful anti-nausea medications …. in the hospital, it’s masked in a pill form called marinol. Such a beautiful, beautiful drug. It helps to prevent nausea while it increases your appetite. I asked the nurses why they don’t give marinol to patients in the first place … after all, it actually works extremely well to help you deal with the side effects …. and their response? “Honey, it’s all politics.” 

So really, what’s chemo like? For those of you who have watched the Harry Potter 6 movie, the best analogy I can come up with is the scene where Harry attempts to feed Dumbledore a deadly potion so that they can finally obtain the Horcrux.  

POSITIVES:

1. Preliminary results showed that I do not have cancerous cells in my cerebral fluid – spine and brain. There could be a few hiding that the labs couldn’t detect, so they’ve done two spinal taps already on me with chemo injected just to be safe. 

2. I haven’t gotten an infection yet. *knock on wood*

3. White blood counts are slowly rising on a positive trend

4. Nausea and vomiting reduced to only maybe once or twice a day now. I eat sour patch kids candy to ward off the nausea and it surprisingly works  

Sometimes, I wonder if having leukemia is really a gift. Perhaps a strange, unorthodox gift that gives you a whole new appreciation for life’s simple pleasures — all I want to do when I get discharged from the hospital is to grab my favorite Chipotle Burrito Bowl and a Jamba Juice. And maybe do some cartwheels in an open, grassy field.  

Hopefully only less than two weeks to go before I get discharged!