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| With my big hair out of the picture, my other prominent feature gets to be in the limelight... look out, Streisand;) |
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| ...my hair is mostly gone as I post, but the pixie cut my friend (and artist extradinaire!) Cathy gave me was super cute and I look forward to rockin' it again come spring hopefully! :) |
Wow… it has been less than two weeks since I posted anything but it’s been choc full of eventfulness – this chemo business wipes you out, keeps you guessing, and is bigger and badder (for lack of better words) than I ever imagined.
Got my hair cut as planned June 3rd (a transition cut, so I didn't have to watch my red curls coming out of my head - also a chance to see what I'll look like with short hair when it starts growing back:) )… the same day my white blood cell counts came back low, low, low. As white blood cells are your defense against any sort of germ or bacteria that tries to attack, when you don’t have any your chances for getting sick are crazy high – so high that they advised me to “slow down and lay low”, wash my hands constantly, to not eat raw fruits or veggies as they can harbor bacteria… and the list goes on.
My version of slowing down and laying low was apparently not quite what they had in mind (imagine that), so by Tuesday I had picked up an undesirable guest of sorts that attacked my nonexistent immune system and, much to my dismay, quickly showed me who was boss… fever, antibiotics, stress, and ‘house arrest’ ensued… really not my idea of fun as I had been feeling SO much better up until that point and had a busy week/weekend of dance rehearsals and recital on the horizon… alas.
After a couple rough days of not feeling so tough or strong or positive (I’m pretty sure there is a direct correlation between low white blood cells and feelings of doom, despair, and patheticness), I began to feel better and emerged having learned yet another lesson (silver lining?). You can not just push through and persevere when you have no white blood cells. It doesn’t matter how robust your immune system was two weeks ago, how many medical abstracts and doctor's reports and online forums you've read to learn all about it, how careful you tell yourself you are being, or how important you think all those things you need to do are; when the counts drop you are just plain vulnerable, and no amount of positive thinking or toughing it out changes that. This is a difficult one to assimilate (understatement) – in most facets of life (academics, athletics, learning something new...) if you work a little harder, push yourself, you can improve and prevail…”mind over matter”, right?... getting through chemo is therefore completely counterintuitive; you have to do less, at times virtually nothing, in order to get through it!? And you definitely cannot think or study your way out of the side effects (other than maybe being down in the dumps)... argh!
So, yes, the plan is to lay lower… though anyone who knows me even remotely realizes that this will neither be an easy feat nor foster good moods. Sigh. Thank goodness for family, friends, humor, music, and chocolate among the many other things getting me through this...
...a few words of inspiration keeping me going this week, from Brett Dennen…
"Sometimes my troubles get so thick
I can’t see how I’m gonna get through it
But then I would rather be – stuck up in a tree…
Than be tied to it."
~from There Is So Much More – beautiful song, look it up!
More soon… just wanted to post and get a few haircut photos up… it’s fleeing the scalp quickly and I’m well on my way to baldness… whew, every day is an adventure!
peace, love, gratitude, deep breaths ,and great joy to all! :)
xoxo
