The Break

I’m seven weeks from my last chemo treatment. This round I had one infusion a month for two cycles, six months in total. After three months I had a scan that showed, for the first time, not progress but stability. The cancer was no worse and no better.

I don’t think that was entirely accurate. One reason we went back to treatment when we did, the main reason in my mind, was because my right lung was filled with fluid, to the point that it always bothered me and I was short of breath all the time, even climbing stairs at home. The fluid is there, but it isn’t bothering me these days.

The scan after six months showed the same thing: stability. My oncologist mapped things out for us on a piece of paper. Responses to chemo are categorized: full response, partial response, stability. All are, of course, good responses, though obviously some are better than others! To have arrived at stability was disappointing. I felt so depleted from the treatment, and my sluggish blood numbers (WBC, RBC, hemoglobin, platelets) were a source of fatigue, and I was still short of breath. If this was as good as I could hope to feel, well, that was discouraging. That was different. We’ve also shortened the break time– my next scan will be in two months, not three. I realize how much I liked telling people that the cancer was/is a chronic illness, and that I was in a pattern of six months on, six months off. That was a pattern I could more or less accept. Now I am mostly hoping things will still be stable after two months, and we’ll move to four months, maybe make it again to six before starting treatment again.

That oncology visit was four weeks from the last chemo treatment. In these three weeks, however, I do feel better. I always forget that I will bounce back and have more energy. The blood must be back in normal range, because although I’m still tired and don’t do nearly as much in a day as I used to, I have done yoga; I have gone for a long walk in my favorite place, Quarry Park; I have had long visits with friends. The long walk was especially encouraging. Though I was tired afterward, I was not breathless during the walk itself. With everything, I say: I can do this.

Last night I parsed out my week’s worth of medications. Gabapentin for neuropathy and a low-dose antidepressant I’ve taken for decades. Vitamin D. Melatonin. But no more Vitamin B-12, since the platelets seem good. And I rummaged around in my basket of medications. No more dexamethasone, or the other two drugs I take after treatment to limit nausea. I can put those bottles away, far back in the cabinet. Or just leave them in the basket. Psychologically, though, I have put them away. I am putting away, one by one, the habits and patterns of treatment.

Break times are the best. And October is a month I love. We’re still eating from the garden, including lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and cucumbers. The most delicious Greek salads with olives and really good feta. I ordered eighteen boxes of high end broth, six with turmeric and ginger, and six with mushrooms. I picked up lamb from my local lamb farmer.

My garden was small this year, and drought-stricken. I grew potatoes in potato bags, and from the four pounds of seed potatoes I bought, I harvested seven pounds of very small potatoes. I really missed growing my own garlic this year, so I pushed some cloves into the one raised bed I have left outdoors (I have five more in the greenhouse) and piled it with straw. I’d like one more bed so I could have a large potato haul next year. I will miss the potatoes when we’ve eaten them all. I’m used to them lasting until spring. We took out fifteen raised beds last fall, and I have to say I only miss a few things. I am mostly happy and relieved I didn’t have to water that large garden through ten weeks without a drop of rain.

I am waiting for my brain to come back after treatment. It’s better, but not where I need it to be to do the writing I want to be doing. Meanwhile, I am reading, and thinking, and writing in fits and starts. With my neuropathy, and after breaking my ankle falling on the stairs last November, I am much more tentative going down stairs, and I don’t carry any large things up and down. I am tentative. And yet. I am putting chemo and all it entails far back in the cabinet. I am stable.