Tres Difficile

The medical dominoes just keep toppling over. You treat one symptom, and that treatment leads to another symptom, and the treatment of that symptom leads to yet another symptom… and so on and so forth. It’s an endless spiral of managing symptoms, which I’d heard when the chemo process started. But it’s another thing to live it.

When I was discharged from the hospital about two weeks ago, I was put on some antibiotics—standard protocol for chemo patients who get neutropenic fevers (high fevers caused by low white blood cell counts). Antibiotics help protect you when you have a weakened immune system. However, antibiotics can also make you more susceptible to other conditions, including a little something called c. difficile.

In French, difficile translates to difficult. And while that certainly is a cute coincidence, since it is in fact a very difficult condition… In English, it translates to worst diarrhea of all time.

Now, I kept going back and forth about how to most delicately write this post. That’s probably why it took me so long to write it. The severe stomach cramps, dehydration, nausea, and hourly trips to the bathroom probably contributed to the delay as well. But mostly it was the indecision.

Obviously, I’m going to spare my readers the intimidate details. But I decided it’s worth including at least a broad overview of this most recent episode, if only for the fact that it’s part of the whole story. And because I felt the need to post something before people started thinking I’d died. I gotta stay on the grid.

Again, I’m not going to go into detail—not just to save some of my dignity, but also just because I don’t want to relive it. All I will say is that this last week has been very tough (or tres difficile as the French would say). And it all culminated with the decision to postpone my chemo treatment for a week because I wasn’t strong enough to shoot another round of poison into my veins. I had to kick the diarrhea first. And that made me feel very frightened and defeated, despite being assured that delaying treatment is very common during the chemo process.

I never really appreciated how awesome it is to simply not feel sick. Feeling healthy is something I took for granted, as I’m sure many of us do. But now that I’ve been ill for weeks on end, I would kill to just feel normal again. It starts to wear on your soul a little bit, feeling lousy all the time…  

A couple nights ago while I was laying in bed—my bed, normally the epitome of comfort but now brutally uncomfortable after days of tossing and turning in it—I broke down crying. I started to think that maybe my body just isn’t strong enough for chemo. At every turn, there’s a roadblock, another challenge to surmount. Like a gruesome game of whack-a-mole, every time I beat one thing, another thing pops up. I felt so weak and battered. I started to lose hope.

But then, in the midst of my panic, with my herculean husband sitting by my side telling me all the right things… I realized something: This is the fight.

This is the fight.

I have all these bracelets, cards, and trinkets that say things like, “Ready to fight!” or “Kick cancer’s ass!” In fact, I think I was even wearing the “This is my Fighting Era” sweatshirt that was sent to me by a dear friend with whom I hadn’t spoken to for years until my diagnosis. The repetition and overuse of these phrases can sometimes dull the message. I became a little desensitized to the bountiful streams of positivity. But in that moment, all the meaning behind those little trinkets came bubbling back to the surface.

This wouldn’t be a battle if it wasn’t challenging. Chemotherapy hasn’t gained notoriety for being an easy thing to have to undergo. So it’s times like these when I don’t feel strong that I need to stay strong. I have to keep my head up and keep moving forward. I have to keep trying to breath even when I feel like I’m drowning. I have to keep looking for the light ahead even when all I see is darkness.

This is the fight. And I’m not going down without a really good one–blood, sweat, tears, hair loss, mouth sores, neutropenic fevers, diarrhea and all.