The Merits of the Case

This past weekend was another rough post-Taxol weekend. Everything happened exactly as it did the first time, and there is some comfort in that; it’s good to be able to predict how I’m going to feel on any given day. The discomfort began on Friday afternoon, and by Friday evening it had turned to pain. This time I took pain meds before I went to sleep which helped me make it through the night. The meds didn’t seem to lessen the pain, but they knocked me out and allowed me to sleep through it. By Saturday morning I was in a lot of pain.

The best way to describe it is to say that it is like that all-over achiness that you sometimes get when you have the flu. (I think. I actually never get that achiness so I’m just guessing it feels like that.) However, it’s more painful than mere achiness. Every single inch of my body hurt on Saturday. It hurt if I pressed a finger against my arm or my chest or my scalp or my leg. My bones hurt, my muscles hurt, and even my skin hurt.

By Sunday morning the pain began to lessen, and by last night it was mainly just in my hips and legs. This morning my legs and hips hurt, but the pain continues to lessen bit by bit. If things continue as they did last time, I expect to still have some discomfort through Wednesday but it will be a little bit less each day.

As for other side-effects…there aren’t too many. My ability to taste was off a little bit on Friday night and Saturday, but gradually returned throughout the day yesterday. I still can’t taste fully, but it is not nearly as bad as it was with the AC. I am also still very tired, but I have come to the conclusion that I’ll be dealing with that until I’m finished with all of this. I also experienced a bit of numbness in my hands and feet this time, which is a common side-effect of Taxol. It seems to be getting better today, but I will continue to monitor it.

But here’s the good news. My hair is coming back. A week or so ago I began to notice very fine, thin hairs growing in the completely bald patches on my head. At first, I chalked it up to my imagination. I thought that because I wanted it so badly I was probably just seeing hairs where there weren’t really hairs. As the week progressed, however, more of those little baby hairs have appeared and now I only have one completely bald patch left on my head. (And even that has a few hairs covering it.) I’m not sure if you would even be able to see the hairs unless I pointed them out to you, but they are definitely there. They are dark blond as far as I can tell…we’ll see what happens as they fill in.

There’s more good news, too, which I will share with you in a separate post.