Here Comes Phase 2

It's Friday and I feel great.

Relatively.

If you had told me 3 months ago that I would feel like this and describe it as 'great' I'd have though you were crazy.  But context is a powerful thing.  Compared to 96 straight hours of nausea and a week of painful cold sensitivity... I feel great!  

I'm tired and my sense of taste still hasn't fully recovered.  I'm weak and slow and my brain gets mushy.  But I haven't been poisoned in almost 2 whole weeks.  Context!

Also, it helps that the CT scan and radiation oncology consult went very well.  The oral and intravenous contrast were appropriately awful.  (Next time I'm bringing a bottle of tequila and a lime to help with the oral contrast.)  But the results were good.  The tumors have responded to the chemotherapy and everything else behaved appropriately.  This is what all the doctors said would happen and they also said I'd be cured at the end of the therapy.  So it's a massive confidence boost to have things going the way they said they would.

Phase 2 is supposed to be less intense in terms of side effects, but much more invasive and with greater time-demands.  It's probably going to suck.  But it's going to be a different kind of suck!  Also, it's six weeks long while Phase 1 was 8 weeks long, so it's 25% less suck!

Sounds like a winning ad campaign: All New Phase 2 Chemo & Radiation, now with 25% less suck!

Anyway, I feel good and I'm going to enjoy this weekend because Monday starts 6 straight weeks of being stabbed.  If you see me anytime from May 8th to late June, I'll have a needle in my chest.  Hugs are okay, high-fives are cool, but no chest thumps. 

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