Final Chemo

This is the penultimate day of my final chemo cycle. It has been months since my last post because I am so unsure about how I feel, everything changes minute to minute. I have become more tired each cycle and have not really recovered fully in the off chemo periods. The oncologist shortened the on chemo period and lengthened the off period so that I have been having 10 days on and 10 days off.

To say I am tired is such an understatement that I have been searching my memory for words that give all the nuances associated with this malais. I am torpid, lethargic, exhausted, listless, languid, spiritless, fatigued, drained, run-down, weary, bleary, hazy, done-in, shattered, drowsy, enervated, weakened, worn-out, bone-weary, bushed, sapped, spent, shot, fragile, light-headed, woozy, whacked, zonked, tuckered-out and in a state of ennui.
The fatigue is so all consuming that I began to doubt that energy had ever existed in me, until I found last year's wall calendar. I flicked through the pages seeing appointments for personal training at the gym, dates to meet friends to walk, theatre, bookclub, dance classes, until June. Life as I knew it changed with my diagnosis of colon cancer. As the pages turned the memories of those awful months came flooding back, the testing, operation, pain, recovery and then chemo.
A friend emailed me last week to see how I was because I hadn't updated the blog. I can't recall all I said but I do remember saying that if I had the chance to take back the last 9 months that I am not sure that I would. The idea just slipped out of my mind through my fingertips and onto the email without a lot of conscious thought. I have been mulling over those words these last few days, I told him (in essence) that what I had gained outweighed the pain and illness. In the grip of this fatigue but with the end of it in clear sight, I think its true. This is not a journey I would have chosen or would have ever imagined would be in my life, but now I am on this road it's the only one I know.