Feeling better

I have been out of touch because I've been sick. It's been a rough week, and getting worse until today. I think I picked up a virus in my lungs. For some reason, I've also been very nauseous and dealing with pain. The lymph nodes under my right "good" arm started to hurt like heck a few days ago. This was terrifying, as it meant the cancer has traveled again. It also had me worried because the entire nightmare started when my left lymph nodes went nuts and I was in agony until they were removed. I had one bad night here when I woke up in pain. Mom heard me and came in to sit with me for the very long hour it took for 2 oxycodone to manage it. It was a huge gift to finally fall asleep. When I met with the doctors, they still felt this was probably just more of the body responding to cancer cell die-off with inflammation. They also decided to take me off all ivs except the chemo in a bid to reduce the lung filling up and remove the catheter. So far, this is not working. It may be the virus I picked up (running a low grade fever), but the lung is draining more, not less. But the worst over the past few days has been nausea that makes it hard to eat, which makes me hungry, which makes me nauseous.... Anyway, woke up this morning feeling not much better. Mom helped with the wonderful morning routine of draining the lung, taping the tube back in place with antibiotic ointment, trying to eat something (toast and eggs) and trying to fall asleep again. Then, miracle of miracles, I woke a few hours later feeling better! Ate some fruit salad, eggs salad, and am blogging. Boy, I hope this is the turning point. I still don't know if this treatment is working well enough to keep up with the cancer, which is still growing fast. They will check my blood markers on Monday. I am not optimistic for this time, but still hope that I, like others here, will see results over a longer period. The hard part is going to be managing the nausea, as both the chemo and the oral treatments cause it. You would think it would be easy to say "it's worth it if I live." But that's a lot harder to do than you'd think. I've decided nausea is worse than pain, which can be controlled with narcotics. It's bad to be in la la land, but not unpleasant. Anyway, wish me luck in keeping this under control. A whiny post, but that's what's been going on!