Penultimate day of Xeloda round 12

Yesterday was the second-to-last day of round 12 of Xeloda and it hit me hard. By mid-morning I had diarrhea, followed by fatigue, hand-foot issues, and mouth sores. I decided to cancel the neighborhood Shabbat dinner we'd planned to host for some folks from our synagogue because I could barely hobble, much less shop and cook. Everyone understood and sent me wishes to feel better soon. I slept the rest of the day. Rik ordered some Chines food and I crawled into bed around 8 PM.

The hard thing about all of this was that I'd forgotten how awful the chemo side effects can be, since I don't experience very much on Xeloda. Yes, I have a lot of hand-foot syndrome, but for some reason it wasn't so bad this month. I didn't even have to use henna! But I keep forgetting from month to month what the last two days of each cycle and the first two days of the time off can be like. Xeloda is cumulative, so I feel much worse at the end of the cycle than at the beginning.

So today is the last day. My feet hurt so much when I got out of bed to use the bathroom that I couldn't bear to stand. Rik brought me some yogurt and my morning meds but I stayed in bed until 1 PM. Hunger finally drove me up and by then my feet were less tender, the diarrhea had stopped and I really couldn't sleep any longer.

This is how it goes: I feel rotten, I blog about how rough it is. Then I feel better, I live my life, and I forget to blog except for special things, like holiday celebrations.

I guess I need to put my blogging on a schedule so that I don't go too many days on "quiet mode."

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