Angry Tremors and Depression

This post is only to prove as a short very long (sorry, didn’t realize I had so much to say) update of what has been going on lately.  I feel like I have disappeared off the face of the earth.  I haven’t, I have just been not “here”.  Wherever that proverbial “here” happens to be.  I haven’t even done my “Chemo Chronicles” article for last Friday.  I will do that, but there isn’t much that you are missing.  I still want to get it down though just to get it documented - that is the point of all this anyhow.

I published an article the other day, “I’m Not Angry, I’m Just On Prednisone”, and then later that night published my very first web video, “My Nightly Chemo Meds”, which really helped me to chill a little.

I have been absolutely unbearable to everyone.  I know I have been, and I’m sorry.  From manic, to absolutely depressed or angry, I have become what I feel to be more of a basketcase than ever.  Snapping and yelling, screaming and hollering, crying…  And just a few minute before I would be laughing.  It’s the Prednisone.  I know I keep saying it, and you all are probably thinking, “Give it up, already, on the Prednisone”, but it really is effecting me that much.  Tomorrow is my last day of my 14-day chemo cycle, thank God.  I will have 14-days of some sort of sanity before I start it all over again.

I have gained a lot of weight with this treatment.  I weighed in at the heaviest at 167, I believe.  Averaged about 160-163, and tonight made it back down to 155.  I am hoping over my 14-day break I will be able to make it well back down into the 140s.  I gave away what I call my “fat clothes” when I had been so skinny for so long and was able to make it down to 122.  A month and a half later I have nothing to wear.  I was lucky to have a pair of jeans and 3 pairs of pants I can wear to work, and 3-4 shirts to cycle through that I hadn’t given away.  The weight thing still bothers me greatly, but all it does is depress me even more, so I am just taking my apple cider vinegar pills as directed and have been hoping for the best.  They do curb my appetite greatly, and they are supposed to aid in weight loss, so maybe they are working.  There was a few days stretch in this past 2 weeks that I hadn’t taken them, and that is where I think I ballooned up the most.

I have been also taking the water pill to help - don’t think I am retaining water, but it seems to be helping.  I also drink coffee more to aid in the peeing thing.  I’m gonna end up all screwed up if I don’t be careful, I know.  But I am being careful.  For the most part.  I mean, I think I am retaining some water, as can be seen in the picture of my feet, but that’s not the main cause of the weight gain.  You can see where the straps to my shoes had cut into my feet.  My whole life I have had skinny thin feet.  You can tell they are very swollen and…well…fat.  I have to just slide my feet in and walk on the straps which does get annoying, but it feels better than that piece of elastic digging into my skin constantly and making my feet hurt even more than they do from what I think is the neuropathy.  Speaking of neuropathy…wow.  This has been a fun one for that too.

My feet have been hurting NONSTOP.  I am sure I have mentioned it before, but it feels like the bones in my feet are breaking each time I take a step.  It has gotten a lot worse this cycle, and the only thing that has taken it away is to dope up on the oxycodone.  I have never been one for narcotics, and I even remember asking Dr. Clark specifically for something that was non-narcotic at the beginning of all this, but I have to be thankful now that I have the oxy.  There truly is a divine moment when I am sitting or laying there and the oxycodone kicks in and I can literally feel the pain going away.  It almost feels as if a sheath is being removed from my legs.  From my knees down (which it has been hurting all the way up my legs to the bottom of my knees this time), I can actually feel the pain just wither away.  It lasts about 3-4 hours and then a dull nagging comes back.  I generally just deal with the dull nagging - as long as I am not in pain.  I get sick of clubbing around, hardly able to walk.  Nagging I can handle.

The video above is a product of neuropathy, as well, in my opinion.  The past few days I have noticed some shaking, with what has increasingly gotten to the point of what I would call a tremor. I think it is chemo related, possibly neuropathy, but I can’t be sure. You can use the notepad on the desk as a point of reference. I was trying to show that my hand was shaking, but the hand that I was using to hold the camera was shaking so badly that you couldn’t tell that the one I was shooting was trembling. If you look at my fingers, you can somewhat see them twitch, which has become a bad problem for all of my extremities.  As well as the shaking, my fingers and half of my hands are completely numb, except for a constant pin pain at the very tips.  My feet are almost completely numb, except for the same pin pain at the very tips of a couple toes and in my arches.  Dr. Clark always has me try to stand on my tiptoes, to gauge the neuropathy, and to date I have still passed the test, though the past few days, standing on my toes has become quite a deliberate motion, as well as trying to grasp a pen and write.  I am so shaky, and feel that I have lost a lot of my fine motor control.  I can actually feel what feels like a bone tremor up to about my elbows.

My tongue hurts.  Literally hurts.  I feel like there are a thousand accupuncture needles stabbing it, from the tip all the way back.  I have had the tongue problems before this, during past chemo cycles, though I don’t remember the constant pain.  I remember that during my last cycle, my tongue went numb, and I was able to chow down on some serious spicy food, which I hadn’t been able to do ever in my life, but this is actual pain.  I told you all in a previous post I would spare you the picture of my tongue, but now I’m not so gracious.  I don’t know what’s so embarrassing about a tongue, but it is somewhat embarrassing.  Either way, here it is because I am trying to demonstrate something specific, so sorry for the visual.  It is somewhat hard to tell, because of the flash, but there is a weird white coating on my tongue.  It doesn’t brush away.  It doesn’t wash away, it is just there.  It could be thrush again, I don’t know.  I had the coating before, they told me it was thrush and gave me medicine for it, but I haven’t bothered to do anything about it this time.  Where my tongue is not covered in whiteness, it is beet blood red.  That is where it hurts the most, around the tip and the sides and edges, where the red is.

I think I am just becoming more and more used to different side-effects, them being different with each chemo treatment, and to varying degrees, that I am just getting sick of calling the cancer center for every thing I encounter.  It’s not that I am trying to necessarily harbor an “I don’t give a damn” attitude.  It’s just that I’m used to something always coming up and knowing, “Oh, it’s from the chemo”.  It seems that there isn’t anything really to “cure” anything that happens, anyhow.  Just the occasional, “here, take this if you want xx-symptom to go away”.  I’m tired of buying a new med for this, or a new med for that.  Just make sure I’m not in pain and I’ll just stay quiet.  I have my oxycodone for my feet, my lorazepam for my mood and my tempazepam for sleep.  Those are the big ones - just keep me coming on those and the rest I will just deal with.  14 days isn’t that long in the grand scheme of things anyhow.  Tomorrow night is my last night for meds, by Sunday night most of this will be gone.

I am supposed to go in for my weekly labs tomorrow, but my co-worker won’t be there, so I have to man the office all day.  I guess I don’t necessarily mind.  Crap happens, I am just interested what my labs will look like.  However, it was the week after I had stopped treatment the last time, where my labs got all whacked and I had to take the Neupogen shots.  I remember being surprised, because you would think my labs would be messed up while on chemo, rather than a week after I had stopped it.  Eh, either way.  The nurse had a specific name for it - ether something, or apicipate, or some weird something.  I know my terms are no where close to what the actual term is, but yeah.  Whatever.

I also decided to have my very first mental breakdown yesterday.  4-months post diagnosis, and I thought I had done very well, never breaking down, no pity parties, no sobbing fits, questioning “why me?!”.  It had been a fairly solid morning at work - I had to run to the bathroom for the 10th time in two hours, because of the water pill, so to the bathroom I went.  I remember joking to my co-worker on the way out of the office about having to pee so much.  Walked the short 15 feet to the bathroom, went straight into the stall (excuse the visuals), plopped down to pee, and mid-stream started bawling.  Out it came, tears everywhere.  Sobbing like crazy.  I couldn’t stop.  All I could think about was my kids and how I don’t want to leave them.  I haven’t had the opportunity to give my kids the world yet.  I want that chance, and I don’t want to be stripped of that.  That means the world to me, and that is the sole reason I am here anyhow.  My kids.  What will happen if I leave them?  I don’t want to leave them.  It’s not that I am afraid to leave, I don’t want to leave my kids.

I made it back into the office tears streaming and my co-worker wondering “What the hell happened to you?!”.  I had my short 45-second rant about how I don’t want to leave my kids and went back to my desk.  I managed to remain in some trance-like state the rest of the day until I went home and became a raging lunatic again, with the yelling and screaming.  I think the anger was caused by some denial or regret from this whole lymphoma-thing, and seeing my kids, and being scared, reliving the sobbing fear that I was dealing with earlier.  Maybe it was easier for me to be angry with them when I got home then to cry and buckle, or for them to see the fear in me.  The yelling only lasted a few minutes, though it was severe, and I forced myself outside with neighbors, while the girls played outside away from me, so that I wouldn’t take it out on them.  By the time my mom came home, I was pretty much silent - forcing myself to stay hushed so I didn’t punish anyone.  It’s not their fault, and I think a lot of this mental quackiness is from, again, the Prednisone.  Ugh.  I drug myself into the living room for the first time in the whole 14-days, I think, just to be around everyone, but I begged everyone to just be mostly quiet and not talk to me much, as again, I didn’t want to snap at anyone, and I was just so emotionally wrought and exhausted.  I forced myself to stay civil when talking, but I am sure I didn’t mutter more than 10 words the whole 3 hours I was out there.  I was just anxious to get to bed, in hopes of letting my brain reset, and start over again.

Today was a great day, after all that.  My brain did, in fact, reset.  I woke this morning seemingly okay, and I was able to joke and laugh today.  Aside from the tremors, I did great, made jokes and seemed to be in a decently good mood most of the day.  I didn’t snap at anyone, yell at anyone, and was actually even a little nice.  Which was…nice.

So, that, for the most part, what I remember of the past 2 weeks on chemo.  I am sure there are things I have forgotten, but thank GOD my chemobrain didn’t come back this time.  I wonder if it’s due to the fact that I have gained weight, and the meds aren’t effecting me the same way because of my body chemistry and the extra weight.  Maybe that’s so, but I don’t know.  Anything and everything is speculation at this point.  All we can do is wonder.  And that is what I will continue to do through all this.  Every second of my day…wonder.