The reality of fighting cancer is that you will be putting drugs in your body. Sometimes REALLY bad drugs. But you have to in order to fight the cancer.
The thing that is supposed to kill your disease in the end feels like it will kill all your energy, your desire to eat and at times your will to get out of bed and live.
I LOVE that these drugs are working for my mom. Her tumors are shrinking and that is VERY good. But she seems to be especially sensitive to the chemotherapy drugs. She is strong and relatively young(62) so she is receiving a very strong cocktail of drugs to fight her pancreatic cancer.
I HATE that mom has to have even more drugs to battle the nausea, diarrhea, confusion, pain, constipation, & others. Many of those drugs have worse side effects than the chemotherapy.
Managing those drugs is an overwhelming task. When you add that to the challenge of finding something that tastes good and the paralyzing fatigue that plagues a person dealing with chemotherapy it just is more than one person can bear. So we who are watching have to come along side to help bear the burden.
I will confess that this week on more than one occasion I have just wanted to quit. Walk away from this trial that we are walking through with my mom.
Much of the problem is drugs. Drugs that help with nausea cause confusion. I hate to see her sick but I also hate that her life has been come a big blur that doesn’t make much sense.
We were dealing with a stay in the hospital this week because mom’s symptoms from chemo weren’t subsiding. More drugs helped in this case & I am glad. Now that she is home we have found that those drugs cause more fatigue & confusion.
Just what she needs huh?
I would never walk away from this—let me make that clear. I do have to step back & take breaks though. It gets overwhelming and exhausting.
And I’m not the one with cancer.
Women of Faith in November 2011