I have mentioned before that having cancer reminds me of being pregnant. The nausea, tiredness, headaches, mood swings, and the memory loss. Now, pregnancy brain is nothing compared to chemo brain. Chemo brain is a much stranger character. When you have pregnancy brain, in my case anyway, I would forget something just to remember it later. With chemo brain, I do things not at all realizing or remembering that I have done them. I'll have conversations with people completely forgetting that we just spoke. Today at school I was talking to another teacher about lesson plans and 10 minutes later I sent her an e-mail asking her the same questions I had just asked her. Then, tonight I was getting ready for bed and went to take my contacts out. They were already out. I don't recall the point and time I took them out, nor did I even realize I was not wearing contacts. I do remember putting them in this morning because before I left I couldn't see... how did they get out? It has to be an unsolved mystery.
Another crazy thing (number 2) I have been dealing with is the lack of taste buds. It started out being a strange metal taste in my mouth and turned into absolutely no taste at all. I can eat some of my favorite things, and there is very little that is satisfying. I hate that. I love food! What fun is eating if you can't taste anything? I put together a mouthwash that seems to help a little. It's water, salt, and baking soda. Yummy sounding I know. And you know, you would think that if you couldn't taste food you would probably not eat as much. Well, not me. It's making me eat more because I want to find something with flavor. I keep eating and eating until I find something, then I eat till I'm stuffed. So much for my chemo diet.
Crazy thing number 3 is that I was meant to be a blond. I always thought it was strange that the hair on my head was a darker blond, almost brown, but the hair on my legs and arms have always been a white blond. Well, it's in the cards that I stay a light blond kinda girl, for now anyway. It seems all my dark hair has fallen out. My head looks awful funny. I have patches of bald spots and patches of blond spots. The blond is actually growing! I didn't even realize that I had any light blond hair on my head until all the dark fell out. I was hoping that the hair on my legs would fall out too so I wouldn't have to shave, but no such luck... blond hair. Crazy! At least, so far, I haven't lost my eyebrows or eye lashes either (again, blond).
And last but not least are these nasty night sweats. It has taken almost a month,, but I think I have it figured out. If I go to sleep with the thinnest cotton shorts and tank top, turn the fan up as high as it will go, keep the pillow away from my neck, and make my husband sleep on the couch I tend not to sweat as much. The grossest thing in the world is waking up in the middle of the night sweating. Yuck! It's not even hot in the house. In fact, I get chills because I have it so cold sometimes, but I can't get comfortable in my bed. Mike occasionally sneaks in to sleep in the bed, who can blame him not wanting to keep a crick in his neck, but those are nights I can't sleep. I sometimes hit him a lot in the middle of the night in hopes that he will go back to the couch. I'm not mean, I just need my beauty sleep.
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