So...Are You On Any Medication?

Last week I had my official pre-transplant consultation, and one of the big concerns that came up was my weight. I’ve lost about 10 pounds off my “normal” weight, but I was fairly thin to begin with. Now I am right on the cusp of being officially underweight. On Thursday last week, the doctor told me that I could expect to lose at least another 10 pounds during the transplant process. Then she gave me a five-second once-over and sighed.

“Ok.” She said. “Your job before you start chemo is to gain as much weight as you can, so that you have some reserve.” (Apparently you can be too skinny.)

I looked at her. “So… you want me to gain a whole bunch of weight in the next four days?”

Pause. “Yes, as much as you can.”

Well, all right then! Bring on the nachos! Avocado! Peanut butter!

I did my best, but five days later and I only managed to put on two measly pounds. When you don’t eat meat, gluten or dairy, and you’re supposed to stay away from sugar, saturated fats, processed foods, and refined carbs, weight is not that easy to gain. (I know, “boo-hoo” say all of you trying to lose weight. But I would take a little excess fat over leukemia every day of the week.)

However, yesterday I got home from my first day of pre-transplant chemo, and along with a truckload of other medications, I am back on steroids that always make me ravenously hungry. So perhaps I can gain a few more pounds before losing it all.

The first day of pre-BMT chemo was fairly anticlimactic considering the huge red letters it has had on our calendar for the last few weeks. Half an hour of IV chemotherapy, some consults with the doctor and pharmacists, and that was it. But what I wasn’t expecting was the enormous bag of drugs they sent me home with. Decadron. Zofran. Ursodiol. Dilantin. And that’s less than half of them. For a woman who has rarely taken prescription medication, I must admit this is hugely overwhelming.

It went a little like this:

“Take this one in the morning with food, but this one in the morning on an empty stomach. Take this one in the afternoon with a snack, but away from other medications. This one will make you drowsy. This one might give you jitters. Take this one at dinner, but away from any calcium or antacids. Take this one at night with food. Take this one at night away from food.”

I wish I were joking. My medications schedule is like a bewildering and somewhat cruel matrix that you need superpowers to decipher. (Good thing I'm getting radiation soon. Maybe that will help with the mutant-superpower thing.) Add the drowsiness-jitters-anxiety-nausea from all the medications, and it will be a miracle if I get it all right. And then the pharmacist laughed and told me that “more are coming.” People around here have a very strange sense of humour.

I too am joining the ranks of inappropriate hilarity. What I found particularly funny is when I saw a new counselor last week and she asked me if I was on any supplements or medications. I laughed.

“Um… do you want them alphabetically or by colour?”

I feel like I am on every medication. And next week they will add more.

But somehow I will make it through. Because I have to. Yesterday might have been Day One of killing Rachel, but next week will be Day One of my rebirth. Until then, I will be busy pill-popping. I know, I know. I said I don’t do that kind of thing. But there is a distinct difference between pills to protect your kidneys and pills to knock out your senses. If the kidney medication does both, well… win win.

So if my writing gets worse or more nonsensical over the next few weeks, or if (God forbid) I start to have spelling and grammatical errors, then please, let’s chalk it up to the medication, shall we?

Shuffling Along

Before cancer, I considered myself an athlete. I was not elite-level by any means, but I ran with an amazing team of very fast women and a great coach. I ran my first marathon right before my son turned one (not fast, mind you, but I still ran it). I broke 20 minutes in a 5k race the summer he turned two, and that same year I won a trail race for the first time. I never ran track in high school or university, so when I joined the racing team, interval and track workouts were entirely new to me. I loved it. I loved the lung-heaving, muscle-burning feel of a tough workout. I loved chatting with the girls on really long runs. I especially loved tackling tough uphills and technical downhills in the trails.

But getting cancer put a major kink in my running plans. Suddenly I was in the land of the sick and sedentary, and I was in major endorphin withdrawal.

Among many other things, this summer was supposed to be my comeback year after pregnancy (in my own head, that is. I’m quite sure no one else was counting the days until my “comeback”). In any case, this was my year to get back into awesome shape, run some really fast 5ks, and tackle some fun trail races before heading to South America. Now, I’m happy when I can complete a 40-minute walk, and I never stray far from home. But I’ve been feeling pretty good lately, and I’ve been itching to run. I am acutely aware that I have a few precious weeks of feeling good before they hit me with industrial strength chemo. I know, however, that low platelets and pounding the pavement do not make good bedfellows. So I walk.

After two rounds of chemo, I’m now waiting for my bone marrow transplant, which is scheduled to happen in a few weeks. At my last doctor’s appointment, after an hour discussing clinical trials and radiation and other Very Serious Things, he asked me if I had any more questions. So I said: “Yes. Can I run between now and the transplant?”

You could have heard a pin drop in the room. There was an absolute stillness as the two nurses and the doctor stared at me like I was a total nut. After a very long pause, the doctor said: “Well… no one’s ever asked me that before.”

The final consensus was that yes, I was allowed to run, though I could tell they thought I was crazy. Maybe I am. But I am not about to lie around like a lump, crying and waiting to die.

So during my first “run” last week, which was more of a power walk with a few breathless shuffles in between, I imagined what racing with cancer would look like. I could get electrolytes pumped straight into my chest catheter (no water stations required!). I would schedule races right after blood transfusions so I had extra energy (legal blood doping!). I would run fundraising races for cancer and collect the proceeds at the end (thank you very much!). It would be awesome.

And then I stopped after only a few minutes, chest heaving, muscles burning, humbled and overwhelmed at my lack of fitness. Maybe racing will have to wait until after cancer. I do have some sense, after all.

But I won’t quit. So if you see me, skinny, bald and panting, shuffling along the local paths, please don’t call an ambulance. I don't need medical attention. I'm just “running.”