Like Water but Slightly Thicker and with Pennies in It

Over the nuelasta hump (hopefully). No headaches again. Plenty of body aches, for me it really seems to be located in the rib cage, upper back, jaw area. Heating pad was key. Thanksgiving was nice with just my parents and food was good too. Seriously, seriously obsessed with mashed potatoes. I believe at one point I discussed how outstanding they were for 5 minutes straight.

Thanksgiving evening however, my body (which seems to be its own entity) did not want to sleep. After about 4 hours of sleep, I was awake for the day at 12:30 am. As I was staying at my parents for the holiday my mother found me around 4 am spewing all sorts of venom for the lack of sleep and being able to hear my father snoring. Clearly, I was still in the relaxed holiday mood I had gone to bed in. This would be the first time of the day she would try to convince me that maybe going to work was not the best plan. Defiantly I got into the shower and insisted that we go do our annual Black Friday shopping first and then I was going to work for the whole day.

1 shower, 1 fire alarm (malfunction in the building) and some breakfast later, my mother made attempt number 2 to convince me not to go to work. I think my lack of coloring and attempting to sleep in my bowl of cereal had something to do with it. I insisted I was as fine as I was going to be and that I was just feeling tired and weird. We went to the mall next to my work at 5:50 am, did one monster of a powershop (Christmas shopping basically done) and I was at work by 7:15 am. At this point, mom had talked me down to being picked up at 2 pm and gave one more try at just calling in sick after becoming easily confused by trying to pick out holiday hand soap. In my defense there were a lot of hand soap choices.

At work I realized I was a little dehydrated and quickly drank 1.5L of water hoping that would help with tiredness. Water at this point tastes a little thick and metallic. I have never been much of a "sipper" but I definitely now chug any beverage just to avoid tasting it. I moved like molasses and after 5 hours of work decided (under the encouragement of my coworkers and mother) to go home. Apparently 3.5 hours of sleep after a neulasta shot while on chemo is not conducive to feeling well. Someday I will learn to listen to other people, but who I am kidding probably not.

Since then, sleep has gradually been increasing. I have been waking up at 12:30 am every night since I started chemo and most of the time can go back to sleep (like last night) but sometimes I am a awake for a couple of hours before going back to sleep. Last night I slept for 10 hours. Yay!

Major side affect of chemo I am dealing with right now is a constant, yucky metal taste in my mouth. Cinnamon gum, cinnamon cereal, baking soda mouth washes help, but nothing currently relieves the taste. Yesterday, I went to CVS and thought well if cinnamon gum is good, lets find something sugar free (don't want cavities) to suck on to relieve the taste. Guess what? CVS does not make "Sugar Free Metallic Taste Relief Lozenges" . They do make sugar free, made with trans fat cinnamon melt-aways (didn't appeal to me) and so-much-sugar-alcohol-they-should-be-in-the-laxative-section Root Beer Barrels (um, no thanks). What did appeal to me were Atomic Fireballs. I left CVS triumphant. These were going to cure the metallic taste. I promptly put one in mouth and for the first time since starting chemo really, really wanted to throw up. Now, a regular human being would do the obvious and spit it out, but not this genius. I decided that maybe it would get better and if I suffered through the first 2 minutes of a fireball it might still work and I could want to throw up for 2 minutes every couple of hour. Yes, that seems normal. Well, end result was I made myself want to throw up for the entire fireball and it seemed to only make the metallic taste worse. I can't do peppermint or spearmint as they make my heartburn worse, but I bought some fresh ginger root to make some ginger broth with so we'll see how that works. In the meantime I bet this kid can relate to the taste: