I just got back from talking to my friend Christine, who successfully fought off cancer a couple of years back. She reminded me of something I’d forgotten about - stock up on lots of your favourite music now! There will likely be many days when you feel too pukey to sleep, and too tired to do much more than sit around.
TV is too aggressive to let you fall asleep when you want, books can be too demanding of your attention, blah, blah, blah. Especially if there is music that you love that you often feel you don’t have the time to listen to, now is the time to crack it out.
For Christine, it was Bach (French & English suites, great; Goldberg Variations and Well-Tempered Clavier, okay; Art of Fugue, too much) Chopin, Brahms (esp. the quintets/sextets or the piano trios), early music. The list is going to be different for everybody, but the trick is to find whatever is interesting enough to engage your mind when you’re awake, but not so demanding of your attention that you can’t sleep or relax when you find you want to or need to.
Early jazz, Palestrina masses, Gregorian chant, Debussy, New Age air pudding, Tai Chi’s greatest hits, thrash metal, whatever does it for you. And it goes without saying, you get to be in charge of the remote at all times. Write it on parchment and pin it to the wall if need be.
Which believe it or not, is exacty why I came here just now - to ask how will I sleep with all the discomfort. No sleeping pills? Too big a risk of addiction?
Looks like there’ll be times when I won’t be able to, and the music idea is superb.
I have my deep loves: Mozart Beethoven Chopin, Puccini, verdi and a whole bunch more, plus Ragtime and Dixie and Sinatra and Phil Harris.
InvisibleWombat, I think you’re my doppelganger. I just went through CHOP for lymphoma, with prednisone and steroids. Toward the end of the six treatments, I was exhausted, but I did work most of the time.
I actually think making rosaries might help take your mind off of everything. I didn’t sleep much when my prednisone was making my wacky and shaky, but I did beading…a little bit at a time. I had it set up so that I could work on it a while, then walk away when I was too jittery, and come back later. I listened to a lot of books online (www.librivox.org) because the anti-nausea drugs made my eyes too blurry to read or watch TV without a massive headache. My oncologist didn’t want me to keep working, but I figured that I would feel rotten no matter where I was, and teaching junior high and high school kids definitely kept me from focusing on my shakiness or nausea. I was just blessed to work in a small school that was very kind to me on my schedules.
My sister went through breast cancer chemo and radiation last year. She was given some great drugs to keep up her energy and keep down nausea (which was important because she’d had surgery years ago to make her esophogus a one-way trip to cure horrible acid reflux. Now she’s physically unable to vomit. Nausea is even worse when you don’t have the relief of vomitting). She was tired the 2nd & 3rd days after chemo, but not horribly so. And you have a lot of down-time in doctor’s offices and hospitals, so the rosaries should be a good way to pass the time. Are these First Communion presents? They aren’t the plastic kind with the glow-in-the-dark beads, are they?
Hey - since you make rosaries, I have a rosary that I love, made in Ireland of somewhat large Connemara marble beads, which has a cheap, cheesy-looking crucifix. Do you know of a place to get a nicer one that I can put on?
I’ll pray the rosary for you on Monday, and keep you in my prayers.
My mother requested sleeping pills for the anxiety, and the feeling that her brain wouldn’t shut off, rather than for discomfort. (Admittedly, different type of cancer, probably different type of chemotherapy). She started out at a particular dose of Ambien, then halved it after having a couple of minor issues. She continued to take Ambien in small doses on at least a occasional basis until a year or so after her treatment ended. She’d take half a pill on those occasions that she expected to have trouble sleeping.
But talk to YOUR doctor, your situation is different.
For the crucifix, please call Our Lady’s Rosary Makers 502-968-1434 for a catalogue and price list. They have enough crosses in stock to suit you (I hope).
If you call, you’ll see they are NOT high tech. No credit cards. I order, they ship, my wife sends them the check. They’re wonderful.
I’ve always wanted to be a doppelganger. We even had the same number of treatments! Did you have that same trouble with metal stuff? And did somebody warn you in advance that the first time you pee after a CHOP treatment, it comes out bright red? If the nurse hadn’t told me about that, I would have had a heart attack thinking I was pissing blood.
No need to include me. I’m coming up on five years cancer-free this summer, and the oncologist says my probability of contracting cancer now is basically the same as someone who’s never had it.
I would recommend finding out what the drugs you will be receiving will be, because that makes a huge difference in what kind of side effects you will experience.
There are some chemo drugs that are known to cause a lot of nausea, but others don’t (although even for those that do tend to cause nausea, nowadays that can be controlled better than it used to be because of good anti-nausea drugs like Zofran).
Some drugs can cause a lot of problems with your blood counts (like the white blood cells or platelets will drop) but others don’t really affect your blood counts at all.
Some drugs can cause motor problems or numbness (because unfortunately they attack your nerves as well as the cancer cells), whereas others don’t.
You get the idea. This is why I would recommend asking what the drugs are and then doing some research on what people have experienced with those particular drugs.
In many cases, there are more than one drug possibility for any given cancer so if you do find the side effects of one chemo unbearable you can talk to your oncologist about what other options might be.
Hope your treatments go smoothly and best wishes to you.
If you end up needing any help completing rosaries, please PM me. I’d most definitely be will to make and ship some your way. Until then, you and the others in this thread will be on my list of rosary intentions. Good luck with the chemo and peace be with you.
Just because I’ve lived in Louisville, I’m going to guess this is Poplar Level Road. Might want to check before you write them.
I usually say the rosary while walking on the treadmill. BarnOwl, you and everyone here will be in my intentions this weekend while I’m walking and praying. God bless.
I am going to make the rosaries for the 3rd grade kids at St Rose of Lima Church/School in neighboring Newtown, CT.
I got a call from them (not the kids )yesterday and a nice lady there asked if she and another person could come to my house and pray for me!!! I suggested I go there after I got my haircut today, and did so.
Well, it turns out that all 5 or 6 gals in their Religious Education Department came into the little conference room, presented me with Prayer Shawl (specially made for me!!!), and then as we all held onto the shawl, one person read a very tender, very touching prayer.
