Marshmallow People (Oh, and Post-Chemo Too)

I would lie to you guys and say that I'm writing this at 6:00 in the morning because I'm just extremely vigorous and productive, but you'd know better. I've been having this feeling right before I fall asleep that I am suddenly enormous like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghost Busters and I am almost, but not quite, large and puffy enough to take off from my bed and float around the room, and since it's a weird feeling I can't fall asleep. (And you thought this blog would just be about boring old cancer - it's also about becoming a marshmallow person!)

So instead I am updating you fine people on what's been going on here.

I think I'm through the post-chemo slump. Except for wildly messing with my sleep schedule, it really wasn't that bad. I wasn't nauseous or manic or totally debilitated, or at least, not to a degree that a nap and some medicine couldn't handle.

Neulasta shots, on the other hand, can go die in a fire. Neulasta is a shot you get after the kind of chemo I'm doing (dose dense ACT) to send your bone marrow into overdrive and perk up your white blood cell count. Not everyone who gets chemo needs Neulasta, but if you are doing this type of chemo, the schedule doesn't allow time for your body to pick itself back up again between sessions, so you need Neulasta to help you out.

A common side effect of Neulasta is "bone and muscle pain." Yea, cool, whatever. I'm tough, I'm young, I don't have osteoporosis, I go to the gym, this will clearly be nothing I can't handle, right? WRONG. (Again, Neulasta, seriously. DIAF.) From about Monday to Wednesday this week I became a 90 year old woman with osteoporosis. I could barely get out of bed, let alone walk around. My call to the hospital went something like this:

- Did you take Tylenol?
- Yea, didn't work.
- Do you have anything stronger?
- I took Percocet.
- Did it work?
- No.
- Can you take two?
- Did. Didn't work, but eventually I passed out.
- Oh. Hang tough there, tiger. Bye!

My saving grace has surprisingly been plain old Advil, in quantities I will not tell you about specifically, because this is a family friendly blog and I don't want you to think I'm advocating drug abuse.

My oncologist assured me that the first Neulasta shot will be the worst since I don't actually need it very badly yet (i.e. the chemo hasn't eaten a ton of my white blood cells -- I am thinking of Pac Man here, FYI). But once I need it more, it should do its job nicely and not bug me so much.

I might try to go to sleep now, but since I'm seeking to avoid the marshmallow thing, it might be better to just hop in the shower and go to work for a bit.