Two Milestones

Recently, I have had two milestones on this journey. They aren't nice milestones. And, I think that they are related.

Milestone one: chemotherapy finally made me throw up. I know, it's almost impossible to believe that I have not thrown up till now. I have had so much chemo. And I have been nauseated, let me tell you. But I have always been able to control it with meds, till the Sunday before last. You know what, it wasn't all that bad either. I really hate to barf, don't get me wrong. But I guess I had built it up in my head that chemo barfing would be super awful. It wasn't. It was just normal barfing. And since all I had eaten was applesauce, well, it could have been worse.

Milestone two: based on my bloodwork, I had to skip chemo. Till now, I have been lucky. My bloodwork was always good enough to proceed with the next dose as planned. But last week, because my platelets were too low, we had to change the plan. Don't get me wrong. I was thrilled to change the plan. I just want to note that this was the first time I haven't bounced back quickly enough.

These two milestones might mean nothing.

Or they might mean that things might start to get a little more difficult.

No way to know. Just got to soldier on, see what happens next.



That was dramatic. It came out that way. It sort of surprised me. But I guess I should admit that I am upset about something, and I have not wanted to write about it. So maybe I will just blurt it out and get it over with.

In the last few years, I have "followed" three cancer survivors' blogs. I love those three people. Daria was a breast cancer lady in Canada who posted sweet comments to my blog and just drew me in with her stories about day to day life fighting cancer. Marco was a guy out in California with a soft tissue sarcoma whose blog I found because he was taking the exact same clinical trial drug that I took in the winter of 2010. It was his wife (The Wife) who blogged. I was always jealous of Marco because they let him have surgery. And Jean was this super funny, brilliant lady in England who had leiomyosarcoma, exactly what I have. The thing is, they have all died.

First, Daria went, and it was a huge shock to me. Stupidly, I hadn't prepared myself for that possibility. I remember crying and feeling awful, but also feeling weird because I never actually met this lady, I just read her blog and felt that she was my friend. It was hard, but I still had Jean and Marco. I stuck close to Jean because we had exactly the same cancer and took a lot of the same chemo. Oh, but every milestone for Jean gave me something else to worry about. Like, when suddenly she couldn't walk and was writing about life in a wheelchair. Then she died, and I was really upset. I feel bad about this, but I started skimming The Wife's posts about Marco. I put some distance between us in my head. Just in case. Like I had to protect myself. And now his fight has ended, too.

Daria and Jean are still on my list of followers, and sometimes I go look at their pictures. Marco probably never even knew that I existed. Because I am not following anyone else, those last few posts about Marco are sitting there at the top of my reading list, and I see them every time I come in to post something. So I guess I finally had to talk about it. But I am not ready yet to look for someone new to follow. I'll know when I am ready.