The Other Side of the Hardest Part

Look at me; I am in a place fear told me I could never be. I am writing from the other side of the hardest part of my treatment. At first, I decided fear was wrong. That's because after high dose chemo I felt just fine. Then, evening came and it hit me. Fear was right. Every moment of that evening and the next day brought new pain. I threw up first dinner, then lunch...then acid that burned my throat and stung my eyes. I twitched with weird pains in my legs and along my back. And a migraine, though not as bad as previous ones I've suffered, stayed with me for two days. No matter how much Darvon or Ativan I allowed myself to take.

I threw up so much, I lost two and half pounds. I wondered how today I would make it to MDA for the final step, the receiving of my frozen stem cells back into my body. But I did. My headache finally went away when they started pre-meds for the return of my stem cells. I lay on the bed watching them pull my stem cells, steaming with freezing vapor, out of their storage. Fear came again. I had been wrong about fear. Fear had certainly won over me the last two days, why not now. So, when the cells went in, I started retching again. I couldn't talk, but hid under the covers in between, the fear in me was so great.

The nurses scrambled, trying to find something to relieve me. Finally, an Ativan injection into my IV, and I fell into a peaceful sleep. When I woke up, the process was over. The taste of rotten watermelons in my mouth (something to do with the preservatives that are used on the cells).

But I have made it to the other side of these painful moments. I am weak, but I am going to make it. I'm writing this blog, after all. And that is something I feared I would not be able to do when I hadn't made it (last night) to the other side of the hardest part.