Halfway point reached for the chemotherapy! I have 6 cycles of 3 weeks each, and I’ve just emerged from the bad part of the third session.

Already by the second time the whole thing felt like routine. Show up, get injected, recover, go back to normal life. It gets a little harder that way: coming out of the hospital with the certainty that you’re going to feel like crap for the next 5 days (and a little fragile for 2 more days). No novelty factor, no ‘I wonder what’s gonna happen now’, just sticking it out, is hard on the mood. My meditation practice helps a bit, I think I’ll do a blog post about that at some point.

But when you emerge, it’s like the sun comes out and everything’s great again! You never appreciate health until you go without. Two weeks out of three is really not bad, considering it gives me a good chance to come out on the other side ready for another good stretch of life. The scans show it’s working.

The adventure continues: for the next 3 cycles I’ll get a different drugs, Docetaxel, with a slightly different but equally joyful panel of side effects. But first: two whole weeks of normal! Amazing.