"This Tastes Like Crap": A Memoir
Somehow, I've made it to the end of week 5 without doing any of the following: 1) drowning in a pool of my own tears because a taco no longer tastes like a taco, 2) fallen asleep while teaching, 3) stopped teaching (I am woman hear me roar).
Let's recap the last 5 weeks shall we? Let me take you back to the very beginning of treatment. Back to a magical, magical time where food tasted like .... food ... and my personal goal in life was to eat all the calories.
I'm going to refer to weeks 1-3 as the glory days. This was back when daily radiation after a full day of work was more of a pain in the butt than a horrible experience. Granted, putting on a face mask and having your body strapped down to a table while simultaneously being told not to move for 15 minutes (all while a machine shoots laser beams into your head) wasn't necessarily a trip to Disney World, but as it goes, it is what it is. It wasn't that bad.
Then there was the once a week chemo. Oh, chemo, how I loathe you. I had less intense side effects this time around (yay) but the old chemo was still in my system wrecking havoc for no apparent reason. By wrecking havoc, I mean at this point I had only about 2-3 eyelashes left and no eyebrows.
Here is a rare, untouched photo of me during this time. #nofilter
Anyways ... I started to call Tuesdays my spa days because I was #lucky enough to get the "full cancer experience".
Blood-work. Doctors appointment. Talk about cancer. Benadryl. Ativan. Benadryl. Talk about cancer. 3-hour Chemo infusion. Sleep. Sleep. Wake up in drug induced fog. Radiation. Another doctors appointment. Talk about cancer. Home.
.......
After the glory days of weeks 1-3 passed, I moved into a period that I will refer to as "Chemo Brain Made Me Do It". You know when you're watching a movie or a TV show and you recognize an actor but you can't quite remember the name and it drives you insane until you figure it out? THAT IS LIFE ON CHEMO. You forget everything; the date, where you put your phone, what you were just about to say. You name it, I probably forgot it. I forgot the word "elevator" one day. For the life of me I could not recall what that stupid thing is that transports people up and down different floors in a building. Another day, I (apparently) forgot how to subtract, not once but THREE times while teaching a class. Now to give myself a little break it was 2:30 on a Friday and I was exhausted, but regardless, I incorrectly subtracted three times while teaching.
There was a lot of this that day:
Student: "Mrs. Legleiter - that's not right"
Me: "I know - I was testing you to see if you caught my mistakes. Good job" (freaks outs silently in my head)
On top of the chemo brain, I also had the following fun side effects: 1) Crazy fatigue. Every day after work I would pass out almost immediately on the couch. 2) Horrible sores ALL over my mouth (my entire tongue, down my throat, on my lips, etc.) Think about how much one canker sore hurts then multiply it by .. a lot. These little things made it hard to eat, swallow, and talk. Totally not necessary things to go through your day right? 3) I lost taste of EVERYTHING. One day, I could taste flavors, and then all of a sudden BOOM: NOTHING. What fresh hell was this?
My inability to taste foods has been the hardest and most IRRITATING side effect to deal with to date. I am not embarrassed to say that I LOVE food. I mean, I don't eat to live, I live to eat. Going out to dinner or looking forward to a great (mexican) meal - these things feed my soul. Now however, everything either tastes like pure crap, or tastes like pure nothing. Last night I had a sip of Diet Dr. Pepper and basically spit it straight out. It tasted like acid mixed with swamp water. I mean, you could essentially dip a sardine in some queso and it would taste the same to me as a chip dipped in queso.
I literally sat in my car driving home from radiation the other day smelling a kit kat bar. SMELLING IT. IT SMELLED SO GOOD. IT SMELLED LIKE CHOCOLATE IS SUPPOSED TO TASTE. So I took a bite of this magical chocolate bar and NOTHING. It's the worst. It makes eating a huge task and something that I just plain don't want to do. Food - I miss you.
I told Zach the other night that every meal feels like this: it's like I'm at my favorite restaurant, extremely hungry, and then I see the waiter coming with my food (I bet we all can admit how happy this moment is). Then, all of a sudden I look around and I'm not at my favorite restraurant, I'm at a Luby's or Applebee's and have to eat some under-seasoned, bland meal off the "gluten free low calorie" menu. Dramatic? Maybe. The honest truth? Yup.
............
Things I miss/would give away my first born to get back:
1) Going to a Mexican restaurant and eating so many chips and salsa that you feel like dying by the time the main course shows up, but you just unbutton your pants and push forward.
2) The taste of a fountain Diet Coke from McDonalds or Sonic when you're on the verge of an extreme caffeine crash. Diet Coke tastes better in Styrofoam. Proven Fact.
3) A big glass (read: bottle) of red wine after a long day. or a short day. Or any day of the week that ends in "day".
............
Now here I am finally finished with week 5 (which I honestly cannot believe). I'm rockin' that macaroni/casserole/soft food diet, semi-miserable most days, and I finally gave in this morning and started taking pain meds because it had gotten so bad BUT Y'ALL I AM DOING THE DAMN THING. I have 2 more chemo treatments and 11 more radiation treatments and I am DONE. Not to toot my own horn (jk I will), but I have shocked all of my doctors that I am still eating without a feeding tube, and that I am still working full days. So TOOT TOOT bc I am pretty proud of myself.
Cheers to week 5 being done! Also cheers to my sweet husband and parents who - at this moment - are outside re-building a fence while I sit in on the couch with some codeine and Fixer Upper. (Oh, and also cheers to hair growth! Look at that lovely boys haircut I have coming in!)
XOXO, L