New side effects

It has been a week now since I started my new chemo treatment. And I can certainly say that for me, Taxol is not the beast that AC was, although it does have some funky side effects of its own.

When I was given the chemo, I also had Benadryl dripped directly into my veins. So that entire day I was just worn out.

But that evening and the next day, before my after-chemo shot, I felt wonderful! No nausea, no fatigue, nothing out of the ordinary.

After my neulasta shot, I experienced the usual bone achiness, and on Tuesday and Wednesday, by the end of the day, I was incredibly fatigued. But my spirits were up, and none of that depression crap was setting in. (Yeah!)

Thursday afternoon is when I started feeling the pain that I had read about. While I was lying down for a nap, I had a really hard time falling asleep, as I’d feel odd spurts of pain all over my body. Nothing intense, just annoying. Then as the evening progressed, I felt them more.

The pain is just weird. I could sit down and in 30 seconds feel pain in 7 different parts of my body..first my finger, then my shin, then my wrist, then my head, then my arm. Sometimes it would last a few seconds, sometimes it would linger longer. Again, it wasn’t any kind of debilitating pain. It wasn’t pain that prevented me from being active. As a matter of fact, moving around and doing stuff kept my mind off the pain.

What it prevented me from doing was relaxing and sleeping! Because when I was doing nothing, that’s when these oddball pains were most notable, and most uncomfortable. And if anything woke me up in the middle of the night (a coughing Ella, a crying Max, my husband’s pager, etc.), I had a really hard time falling back to sleep because of the sporadic throbbing.

Needless to say, I’ve been rather tired. Coffee has been a wonderful friend.

The strange side effects lasted for about four days, and seem to have faded today.

Hopefully I’ll get some good, non-drug induced, sleep tonight.

ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.