Monday 22nd June

I feel vaguely vindicated. Today I was chatting to a friend I haven’t seen in a while and she asked me how I am. I told her about the chemo taste that keeps coming back. She said she had had medication once to which she had had a bad reaction. It took about 8 months for her body to stop throwing up the symptoms of the reaction. Maybe my poor old bod is just doing the same – trying to get rid of all traces of the chemo, which was a helluva drug.

You never, ever really know exactly what your body has gone through. With chemo, you can see some of the immediate effects (like the hair falling out) and you feel a lot of the others (like the nausea and sore mouth), but there is so much that must be going on in the body that is basically invisible. The only way we even vaguely understand is by experiencing the effects of the medication and living with the long time they take to disappear completely.

‘Give it time.’ 🙂

Every-so-often I will google something to do with this cancer thing, just because I want to know. It’s interesting that there does not seem to be much out there about the months and months after the last chemo. The immediate seems to be of most interest. The ‘hanging on’ that happens and the time that it takes for the body to get rid of the drugs completely is not really dealt with.

It takes time.

Of course, as with just about anything else to do with cancer, the time will depend on the individual and will vary greatly. The oncologist did say he was amazed that I was affected by so many of the side effects. Maybe it’s just my lot to have a body that will take a long time to get rid of the harsh effects of the drugs.

It’s just that this taste gets to me sometimes. And, of course, there are always moments that are worse than others. I really don’t enjoy it when the damn thing lasts for days at a time. It feels as though every breath has the taste on it, coating my mouth. Then, of course, it will be gone again. I still don’t know if there is something I do that brings it on; or if there is something that I eat that has a hand. Maybe it just comes and goes on its own.

Again, time. (Presuming that this cannot go on forever.)

The pace may be not so intense anymore and the mountain quite not so steep, but there is still climbing to be done.

Onward – and upward, where necessary.