Chemo Delayed

 Today was rough. I was anxious again.

My chemo symptoms from round one weren't super terrible. I did lose my sense of taste and I was nauseous and tired but overall, I think it went ok. I had some aches and pains here and there also but nothing that lasted. I physically feel pretty good which is why today seemed so shitty. 

I was already a little worked up just knowing I was starting over again. Reality hit me in the face today. You have cancer, and you have to do this to take care of it. In the last roughly two weeks I have felt semi-normal again so it was mostly nice to kind of forget about it. I went in, they got the port accessed and drew my blood. Then I was to see my doctor before they started the actual chemo. 

My results hit my patient portal before I saw my doctor so I could see already things weren't very great. My WBC (white blood cell count) was low and my AST (checks for organ damage) was high. So, my brain hit the anxiety button a few more times before I was finally called back to talk about the results.

Dr. Amy is amazing, I really like her. She came in fairly bubbly. I like that about her. She looked over my labs and decided to not start my chemo treatment today because my WBC was too low. That basically means my immune system is shot. In a pandemic, that's not exactly good news. This was unnerving to me because while I expected this to happen, I didn't expect it to happen the very first round. I thought it would slowly get worse over time. Especially since I was feeling physically pretty good, too, I thought all my bloodwork would come back good. She wasn't concerned with my AST being high. She said until it's triple the normal level they don't worry about organ damage. I suppose that's a good thing? But then why not have the normal range for what's considered healthy be higher? 

So, going forward I will have a shot to help keep my WBC boosted to help with my immune system. I asked all the remainder of my questions then marched back over to where they did my blood draw and had them remove the needle and headed home.  I cried on the way home. 

I feel like because of me, so many other's lives will be ruined. My kids, my husband's, my friends', and families'. I feel like such a burden. I feel so overwhelmed and terrified. I just wish everything could be ok or at least know they would be ok again someday. 

This is hard. Unlike any other kind of hard, I've ever experienced. I can't explain it to you and I hope you never have to know.