Chemotherapy and birthdays
Cycle 6, Day 9
This morning I did laundry. My apartment has no facilities, so I have to go to a laundromat. Because of the plethora of airborne diseases that circulate during the Canadian winter, I wait in my car for the cycles to finish. I've put off laundry since I got back from Christmas because it's been too cold on my non-chemo days, and today was the first positive temperature in weeks. It was time. I finished the chore, but the chill put me in bed for the rest of the day. And I'm still tired from it.
On Friday, I have a CT scan. I think everything I'm feeling is a side effect, not a new symptom, but it's impossible to be sure. I don't want to give false impressions, I fully expect this scan to have results incremental with the last. I'm not particularly stressed about it, and if laundry hadn't taken it all out of me I don't think I'd be worried at all. But eventually one of these is going to show something very bad, and that eventuality cannot be forgotten.
My birthday is next week, and that's always been a pretty mixed day for me, this year impossibly so. Right now I'm scheduled to be finishing up a round of chemo on it, making the whole thing moot, but my neutraphil numbers are getting low, and we might delay the next cycle a week because of it. This'll be the last birthday I am certain to be able to do what I want, so I have unbelievably complicated feelings about it all. I'll find out on Friday, also, what's going to happen.
For now, I'm too tired to really let any of this bother me too much, although it does sap my drive to do much of anything.
From the comments
James Petrosky: 
James Petrosky: Oh! There are twelve cycles in my course of treatment, so we're half way! I didn't think to mention it because I know the CT scan means half way, but that isn't universal information