Day 2: Vacation's Over

I still can't say I'm suffering much. This is still not as bad as the flu.

One of the problems with having things go so well until now is that I've obviously become kind of wimpy. A little discomfort, and I'm rushing around looking for remedies.

I never was a very tough sick person. Whenever I get sick, I'm prone to speaking softly, in a groaning voice, and asking for everything. "Can you get this for me?" "Could you get that for me?" If my stomach's nauseous, then I just don't want to move.

Maybe my wife's card should have said, "You know what they say: 'When the going looks tough, you make it look easy (because it is easy).'"

Beware, little more graphic here ...

Since last night, it's not so easy. My stomach is constantly upset or in pain. I have diarrhea, and going to the bathroom burns. (Maybe that's chemo coming out; as I'm eating very blandly.) I'm much more tired than I was.

My mouth's the same. If I go to sleep, I wake up and my mouth is dry and on fire. Rinsing with salt & soda still helps a lot, and so does the Biotene dry mouth gel and the pectin throat lozenges.

For those of you that may be facing this in the future, the pectin throat lozenges were especially helpful while I was walking. Also, I take L-glutamin, about 4,000 mg per day, at the advice of a friend in South Africa who is also going through similar treatments. He says he hasn't had any mouth sores since taking the L-Glutamin, though I don't know how much he's taking. (I did tell my doctors I'm taking it.)

I got up at 4 a.m. after a pretty solid 8 hours straight of sleep except for a couple brief breaks for the bathroom and vital signs. They wake me up every morning at 4 for vital signs, so it's a good time to plan the start of my morning. I force down a little breakfast to settle my stomach, then I rinse my mouth, dress, and walk.

I was still able to walk a mile, and I biked two miles very slowly, though that was too much. My fingers were tingling like the old days when the leukemia wasn't in remission. Back then exercise meant there wasn't enough blood left over to service the limbs, so my calves, forearms, feet, and hands would tingle from lack of circulation.

Fortunately, this week's Through the Bible in a Year commentaries are done because this blog is all I can handle at the moment. Time to go back to sleep.

Thank you again for all the prayers. I'm not expecting to cruise through all this with no suffering at all. I just want to live in the grace of God, always know that all these things are working together for good, not bad, and to be pleasing to God in all of this. I'm still remarkably fortunate, even if this gets much, much worse, and I still have the best support system of any leukemia patient ever, I'm sure.