Like a minefield, or something

I couldn't focus on anything today. Life is really boring when you can't concentrate on anything long enough to enjoy it, and life is really depressing when you can't forget about the horrors within it because you're unable to distract yourself from them.

I've come to the conclusion that living life in remission with such an incredibly aggressive cancer must be what living in a war-torn country is like. You wake up every day, and you worry if you're gonna get blown up or shot when you leave your house, 'cause the odds are NOT in your favour.

I dunno, does that comparison even make sense? I think it does. At least it does to me. For now, anyway!

Mighty Morphine Power Ranger

I ended up back in the ER this past weekend with TERRIBLE abdominal pain--like, seriously, I couldn't even walk. They put me on a morphine drip while they ran tests to try to figure out what it was (they were worried it was my gallbladder) and OMG BEING ON MORPHINE ALL DAY WAS TOTALLY THE BEST THING EVER. Not only did the pain go away instantly, so I had that experience of going from excruciating pain to blissful peace, but I was SOOOOO HAPPY. It was such a happy feeling! But it made me SUPER-sleepy too, and to say I was 'out of it' is the understatement of the century. Omg, I was in and out of the most pleasant, goofy sleep ever all day long. They sent me for X-rays and an ultrasound and during the ultrasound I fell asleep and the poor technician had to wake me up...hahaha. I remember babbling to her about SOMETHING but who knows what it was! Also, I remember at one point I woke up in the X-ray/radiation hallway on the stretcher with my bags and thought, screw this, I've had enough of sleeping, I'm gonna read some manga! Yeeeeaah! So I sat up and started fishing through my bag looking for my Zelda manga and then all of the sudden--BOOM! Next thing I know, I was on my back again, staring up at the ceiling. I had LITERALLY fallen back asleep while looking through my bag. I was so surprised and amused. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before, not in my entire life!

In the evening I got more morphine and then benadryl as they gave me some blood transfusions, and I slept and I slept and I slept and I felt just so incredibly happy. The next day though, it was not so fun! The pain had completely gone away, so I didn't need any more morphine, so I was stone-cold sober in a tiny little isolation room in the ER and very uncomfortable--and I had a bad reaction to my last blood transfusion, a fever of 39.9! O_____O Luckily, they were able to give me some tylenol (I say 'luckily' as sometimes I'm not allowed depending on how they're monitoring my fevers and/or white blood cells, etc.) and my fever went down and I got a visit from one of my hemotologists and he said I was able to go home, soooo in the end I didn't have to stay TOO long the 2nd day and I was discharged by the mid-afternoon.

Oh, and the horrible abdominal pain? We never figured out what it was. Our mutual best guess is that it was a pulled muscle/charliehorse, a result from the horrible way I sit at my computer.

Getting used to missing out on summer

I've been so out of breath today. My counts are at zero (it sure took long enough!) so from here on there's nowhere to go but up, but I'm sure I'll be neutropenic for awhile; apparently you're neutropenic for longer and longer each time you get chemo, and that certainly seems to have been the case thus far. I can't believe it took this long to get to zero! It's going to take forever for them to come back up again, certainly. Especially considering how I was neutropenic last time I got chemo. Man...so house arrest continues, as usual, but it hasn't been all THAT bad; I'm getting used to missing out on every social event there is, and to not seeing anybody, and missing the whole fucking summer. Anyway, I've been watching tons of anime, playing lots of video games, and reading lots of novels, so it's not like I haven't been staying entertained. Today I've been feeling just awful though (physically). Really out of breath, like I mentioned, and dizzy, and seeing stars..so far I've gotten three transfusions this week. My doctor changed my appointments so that instead of going to the day clinic at the hospital twice a week for blood tests (and transfusions if I need them), I now go three times a week, so that they can keep a closer eye on my bloods. It's annoying having to go back & forth so much, but it also feels safer, as I'm under closer watch (which is the point). I've been kind of on edge lately, as the day after tomorrow it'll be five months since I got diagnosed. Why this bothers me is because I'm terrified of relapse; AML has a high relapse rate (this is where those dreadful percentages come in to play) and I somehow gotta make it to three years without a relapse to be considered 'in the clear' (and even then....). A friend of mine on Facebook posted a mind-blowing comic from the wonderful XKCD about this very subject when I was worrying about it on Facebook, and it made me feel sooo much better and less alone. Here's the comic:

DONE!

Chemo's done! I was discharged yesterday. :) It went relatively really quite well, I didn't get anywhere NEAR as sick as I did the other times. I am so relieved, and that's an understatement. So, that's it, then. Nothing left to do but rest and recover, and wait for them to find a donor. It's weird. This is it! That's all there is. I gotta keep going in for blood tests, but as the months go on, they will apparently be less frequent. I still have to go to them, because that's how they keep an eye on my blood cells to make sure I don't relapse. I hope I don't relapse. Ohhhhh I hope I don't relapse! I can't live my life being afraid and anxious with every blood test I take, but I haven't figured out how to put that into practice yet. Think good thoughts for me! xoxoxo

Oh yeah, I'm back in hospital again

So I'm microwaving food innocently in the family room which I have to myself, of COURSE people have to come in, and some lady (NOT a patient or hospital staff) comes up to me and says in a SUPER-cheery voice, "hi, how are you?" and I don't answer cuz I don't feel like talking to a random stranger. So she switches to French and asks me the same thing. So I felt bad and mutter "hi" which she took as an invitation to keep talking and ask how I was doing. I'm just warming up my food bitch, that's how I'm doing. I just very quietly said "good." WTF. You wouldn't wander up to a stranger in a mall or on the bus and do that, what makes you think you can do it in the hospital? "Oh, I'll go brighten a cancer patient's day a little!" No, you're not, you're bothering this cancer patient a little. I'm not your good deed for the day, FUCK OFF.

I dunno, I've always hated random strangers talking to me and it's the main reason I've always, always, ALWAYS worn earphones in the public for the past ohhhh 15 years or so. (Some people STILL don't get the hint.)

Nightmares

I can't remember if I mentioned this here or not, but a really fucked-up thing that's happened since I've been diagnosed with leukemia is the way my dreams have changed. The nightmares. Oh crap, the nightmares. I haven't had any in awhile but they've started up again. I've had two this week. One of them involved me (possibly) drowing someone's baby (I say 'possibly' as the baby was unconscious and there was a chance it'd be OK but things certainly didn't look good), and the other was this morning, when I woke up and went back to bed. I had one bad dream where I got into an argument with my husband about me getting a job, which left me really upset, and then I had this horrible nightmare where I was one of the characters from Lost (Juliet, for any Lost fans who may be reading this, lol).

Now, this nightmare REALLY freaked me the fuck out, so I'm going to write it down here. Writing this shit out makes me feel better. Also, some of my fucked-up dreaming is a cancer-related thing, so I figure it makes sense to write about my dreams here, at least once in awhile. Plus, some people have asked me what kind of dreams I've had related to my cancer, so here's one! So, if you're one of those people who doesn't like to read about dreams, especially in great detail, you're going to want to skip this entry.

So, we had this really unreliable plan to escape the Island, which was to jump off a cliff while wearing lifejackets into the water. But the cliff was so high that when we hit the water, we'd end up unconscious, so Jack (who's a doctor, for those not familiar with the show) would resuscitate us (if he could) and we'd be able to escape that way by attaching balloons on us or something like that. The cliff was really high and the fall was really harsh so our saftey wasn't guaranteed; there was no way of knowing for sure if he'd be able to wake us up again once we hit the water. But it was our only chance of escaping the Island, so we did it, even though we knew our chances weren't that great. So we hit the water and it was harrrsh, and sometimes I was watching it like a show and sometimes I saw it from Juliet's point of view 'cause that's just how dreams are. Anyway, I was the last one to wake up and I was coughing up blood from the impact of hitting the water, and I started slipping in and out of consciousness which felt like blacking out, and because of the life jackets and broken bones from hitting the water from so high up, most of us were floating on the water looking upwards. I was looking up at the clouds and blinked, and all of the sudden it was night and I was looking up at stars, and the most horrible sense of terror came over me as I realized the reason it seemed to have passed from day into night in a split second was because I had passed out for a really long time. And I felt worse, and I was freezing, and I realized I was dying and I was so scared, and I was just floating in the fucking sea, staring up in the sky, and I was dying, and everyone was around me and they had no idea what I was feeling and they were trying to save me, and it was so strange to see them trying to help me when I knew there was nothing they could do because I was about to die. I distinctly remember being happy that was surrounded by my friends and that I didn't have to die alone in the water, but I was so terrified, and I suddenly started gasping, and I realized, well, this is it, I've got to tell them, they can stop trying to save me. I tried to get Kate's attention, I tried to talk, and I could only whisper, so I started talking, and in real life, I woke up to the sound of my voice, saying "This is the end." I was SO RELIEVED to be awake in my bed, but really fucking freaked out from the dream. And freaked out due to me waking up to the sound of my own voice saying "this is the end", referring to myself thinking I was about to die. I just lay in bed for awhile before getting up because that was seriously some fucked-up heavy shit right there.

Anyway, it's getting onto 1:30 AM and I'm still thinking about that nightmare, it's still super vivid in my head. And I gotta say, it helps to have written it out. I had a lot of dreams this morning, but that was the big one. FREAKY SHIT, MAN.

STILL neutropenic

What the subject line says.

Yup, still neutropenic. Quite. How is this possible?! I mean, I know how it's possible, but...ughhh. I had to cancel ALL my plans this weekend--my belated birthday party plans, which was a night at Cine-Express on Saturday, and a potluck on the mountain on Sunday. This is, IIRC, the third time I've canceled my own birthday celebrations I keep trying to hold this year. And worst of all, I was supposed to go to Ottawa on Monday for Canada Day. Sooo not gonna happen now. I'm so upset, and that's an understatement.

I've decided to hold off on organizing any more events until September-ish. I'm supposed to have two more rounds of chemo--one in July and one in August. So if all goes well, by September I should have nothing fucking up my daily and/or social life too badly. Maybe I can actually have some fun then.

For now, back to house arrest. I am going to go crazy soon.