Four
in the morning
Crapped
out
Yawning
Longing
my life away
I'll
never worry
Why
should I?
It's
all gonna fade
Still
Crazy After All These Years
Paul
Simon
Hi. Remember me? I didn't die, or
anything. Fatigue has just won the last few rounds of my ongoing
fight against cancer.
The fatigue... weariness. You know it's
nothing new. It's been a constant complaint since I got sick. I'm
used to standing up to it and getting stuff done. Not much, perhaps,
but some.
So, why haven't I written in weeks?
Well, to be true, my fatigue has sucked any/and all desire out of me
to do anything, and that includes writing. I just don't care to
write... about anything.
I certainly have plenty to write about:
another Thanksgiving with cancer; my daughters came to visit me for a
few days, without the grandkids or family; my latest treatment. All
valid and all things I've written about in the past, in one form or
another.
This time? No thanks.
I think I might be depressed. I know
what you're thinking... who wouldn't be depressed, given his
circumstances. But it doesn't work that way. Justified. Not
justified. Depression is going to make you weary and you certainly
don't need to have a good reason.
This is about the fifth column I've
started since the last one I wrote and I think I may actually have
found the root of the problem. Maybe.
See, brothers and sisters, I'm in the
midst of a radical new treatment for my multiple myeloma. It is
pretty complicated and the medical staff and myself and Sheri are all
finding out things about it as we go along. It involves heavy doses
of steroids, which we all know I hate. We are through the first part
which involved eight, eight-hour treatments, one each Friday. It took
so long because of the number of medications I had to take before we
even started, and then because we had to administer the principal
chemo very slowly.
At this point, right in the middle of
it all, I still go to the clinic once a week. One chemo is given
intravenously and takes one to two hours, and the other remains a
seven to eight-hour process.
And the things is... it's working very
well. VERY well. Prior to introducing this latest therapy, my kappa
light chain proteins had gone up month after month and showed no
signs of topping off. After one session of this new treatment? Bam!
They dropped from 72.1 to 1.01, startling not only Sheri and me, but
the entire medical team working with us. The proteins have since been
lowered to 0.69 which gives us all more faith in the results.
Initially, it was sooooo startling, that everyone, and I mean
everyone- except maybe Sheri, who is never so- may have been somewhat
skeptical.
And, of course, that is all well and
good. But... But... I remain fatigued, distressed and depressed, and
here's why: with this treatment, we're winning the fight against
multiple myeloma. No doubt. However, we are losing the side effects
battle. I feel so poorly so much of the time that knowing we are
managing the cancer seems to matter only a little. That's not really
true. It does matter, a lot. But...
So, the days go by and I hope to keep
up the fight; hope to get past the side effects and into reveling in
the absence of cancer and the presence of better health. I think they
call it hope.
There are a variety of versions of
the story that gives this blog its name. The pony is the constant in
all of them. A man is on his way to a party when he comes across a
young boy shoveling ass over tea kettle at an enormous mountain of
manure. The man asks the child if he wouldn't rather go with him to
the party than shovel all that poop. The kid says, “No way man.
With all that poop... there must be a pony in there somewhere
