Round 5 - toxin overload!

Sufi and I head out to the infusion center at 10pm. We are liking the night time treatments because my body naturally wants to sleep.

Before I even got to the infusion center I started to feel nausea. Dinner was good, but there was something else going on.

I did not feel any resistance in going to the treatment center or getting chemo. I'm so emotionally dead these days that I just show up with a 'whatever' within me.

So, I'll back it up a bit. Sometime after round a 4 I could start to feel that I needed a cleanse. I was getting caught in a toxic cycle and could literally feel my body going all heebie geebie on me!

The heebie geebies feel like this: Imagine you are 20 again and in a drunken stupor from a night of heavy partying. You not only flirt with a boy whose name you can not remember, but you kiss him too! And sometime the next morning you wake up to the alcohol still swimming in your blood stream trying to make their way out. You are not quite sober, you are probably still might be drunk, you wish you had vomited the night before and you have a conscience that starts to sneak into your thought pattern: "Ugggh, I flirted with that boy? and I was so drunk I even kissed him? what else did I do/say? Did I insult my best friend? Did I make a fool of myself?" and then your whole body just kinda shivers in disgust - that is the heebie geebies!

And as I told this story to Anna W., she said, "Yeah, and that boy was probably toxic for you the same way the chemo is!"

Yup! she is so right! The chemo is toxic for my body and my body has had ENOUGH toxins! I am SO jonzing for a really good full body cleanse. But no can do. Gotta put more toxins in my body to get healed!! Gotta consciously choose to abuse my body yet another time to heal... BIZARRE!!!

By the time I got to the treatment center the nausea has increased. Before the pre-meds ever go into my system I can hear my body for the first time ever really talking to me, and it is screaming, "GET THESE TOXINS OUT OF ME!" And then I hear: "I WANT THESE TOXNS O.." but the sentence can not be completed because I am now puking up dinner. Just the thought of chemo makes my whole body retch.

There is a medical term for this reaction. Dr. G calls it: anticipatory nausea. I call it: my body is clever and knows it does not want any more toxins!

But what I know to be true is that when I started chemo I was pretty damn clean physically. There were not many toxins in me at all! With the first round of chemo I did not vomit, and took lots of side effect meds. The second round I vomited once, on day 3 and less side effect meds. Then each round the vomiting has been getting closer and closer to the chemo until today, when it was actually happening before the chemo even went into my body. What I believe is that my body is getting more and more toxic and it wants to vomit out the toxins! That seems like a normal reaction to me. It is getting so over filled with the toxins and frustrated that I won't listen to it, that now it is trying to get the toxins out even before they go in!

So, in an effort to get the chemo in, I adopt a different plan. I explain to my body how the chemo does need to go inside in order to kills the cancer. So I had the nurse call Dr. G at 1 in the morning to get me an Ativan so I am knocked unconscious enough to get the toxins into me.

(Dr. G reminds me later that I was ademently apposed to Ativan the first time... I reminded him that I am ademently apposed to taking side effect meds I do not need, and when I need them I have no problem taking them!)

The second part of this negotiation with my body was to then give it permission to vomit, but after the chemo went in. The next morning I had a friend come over to give me a full bag of fluids through an IV so I stay so I could vomit until my heart/body is contented! What a HUGE difference it makes. (That's me hangin' out in Ana Paula's kitchen with a bag of IV fluids hooked up to me and the wall). So, as the IV fluids went in, we chatted... about birth... of course. :)

I looked forward to every time I retched, because I new the toxins were leaving my body! And that felt SO good!

Yes, I can still feel the toxins in me, I have poor posture and I can feel my white blood cells bottom out, but I have taken no other side effect meds this time! (think of all the money I am saving the insurance company... I hope they thank me later ). Nothing for nausea. Nothing for vomiting. Nothing for sleep!

I feel like this recover is much better than the others.

The closer I get to it being over, the more I feel like I am understanding chemo.