I really can’t be droll or objective right now: today has been just plain awful. Physically and psychologically awful, and I’m just putting it all together.
From the start of this treatment, I’ve had a side effect that usually doesn’t appear until late in the chemotherapy game: neuropathy. The oncologists described to me as tingling and numbness, and I do have those sensations. The tips of my thumbs and first two fingers on both hands feel just a little bit dulled, as if I’ve been outside too long on a very cold day wearing flimsy gloves.
When I started experiencing these mild symptoms during round one, one of my doctors said they can come on sooner rather than later if there’s latent, or existing, neuropathy already happening. She prescribed the Claritin and the B vitamins I already mentioned. They’ve worked pretty well overall.
However, neuropathy is also nerve pain, sharp and squeezing pain that surges along the muscles leaving weakness in its wake. Today, my lower back and thighs have been trembling and cramping by turns all day long. Tonight, just after dinner, I was halfway up the stairs when my hips and knees started wobbling. I clutched at the hand rail and stood there, waiting for equilibrium to come back, and (I realize now) I had a flashback.
When I was 22, I got adult-onset chicken pox and post-viral encephalitis as a secondary infection. Before this cancer diagnosis happened, that was the scariest physical thing I had experienced in my life. The very worst of it was being unable to read for a couple of months. The next worst part was, as you might guess, neuropathy: nearly identical weakness, tremors, and shooting pains in my lower spine and legs.
The thing is, I don’t remember that period in my life at all except for brief, intense impressions. The nature of encephalitis meant my brain wasn’t capable of forming that kind of long-term progressive memory. Tonight, though, I realized that my body remembers. Something tonight – something in the specific shifting of my bones, muscles, and ligaments on these stairs – took me right back to a different moment, long past and dimly stored, but somehow just the same.
Believe it or not, Steve and I got married in the middle of my recovery, when I was still as unsteady on my feet as a newborn colt. I don’t remember much of the wedding ceremony. But tonight I remembered one moment that happened beforehand. Tonight I remembered a moment when I was struggling to get up the church stairs on legs like rubber bands, all because the damned photographer wanted one more picture.
Tonight, now, I can recall that fleeting moment because I believe I had the same physical experience and the same corresponding thought: I will NOT fall. Both then, and tonight, I did sway and lose my balance just enough trigger that thought, and frankly, a knee-jerk kind of rage. I wobbled and I hung on and all the while, I felt anger – as intensely as the nerve pain that caused me to wobble in the first place.
Tomorrow I’m going to tell the oncologist about my previous bout with neuropathy, on the off-chance that it matters and there’s some extra meds or adjustments that might make a difference. I also hope I’ll wake up feeling better, after having gotten a decent night’s sleep.
But first, tonight, I’m going to ask Steve to tell me (again) about our wedding and some happy or funny memory of his from that time. I think I need to be reminded that we made it through – that I made it through, in this same body – and I’m still not going to fall.
medicinal sausage 