11/29/24

Hope you and your families enjoyed a great Thanksgiving day! In spending a little bit more time on Facebook recently, I've enjoyed seeing all the pics from your various dinners.

One more chemo down! Assuming the plan of 6 months of chemo, that has me somewhere around 1/6th of the way. I'll take it.

Overall, this one just felt much more manageable. I was exhausted in every way in the rush leading up to the first chemo, so it was better to go into this second one more rested physically and mentally. We changed up some of the accompanying meds for nausea, with possibly my biggest win being no hiccups! (A year ago, I wouldn't have predicted a Thanksgiving where one of my biggest things to be grateful for was a lack of incessant hiccups.) In general, I was able to just take less of the anti-nausea stuff without having much of an issue with nausea. Those drugs are certainly valuable when needed, but also just cloud my head so much.

One of the chemo drugs, Oxaliplatin, is a bit of a doozy. I'm reminded of the toxicity of these things when the nurses robe up near-Hazmat style just to handle the IV and hooking it up to my port. Oxaliplatin comes with a few weird side effects, all of which are fairly common.

The drug affects your nerves, making them more sensitive to cold. So touching anything the least bit cold, or just getting cold, can create a prickling sensation in hands and feet...kind of like if you really nail your funny bone and it goes down into your fingers. So I wear gloves a lot, particularly when getting anything out of the fridge. And I don't drink anything that's cool or cold, which, having learned the hard way, can make your throat feel like it's closing up (drink something warm to fix).

Other than that, the main challenge is just fatigue. I actually felt better on the day of infusion (Monday) and Tuesday, and then my energy seemed to just vanish around Wednesday afternoon and through most of Thursday. Part of that is probably because I have that pump Mon-Wed that continues to administer one of the chemo drugs, and so maybe it all kind of settles in on Wednesday.

We continue to come at nutrition rigorously, aiming to maximize fuel for my body to both recover and detoxify. Learning a lot about that as we go, and drinking a LOT of fresh pressed juice. Slaid has been helping with the juicing effort and is already thinking about a future business selling fresh pressed juice...always wanting to make a buck!

I enjoyed having my lifelong friend, Ern, shuttle me to chemo on Monday morning. It offered Stacey a chance to focus on some work things and get the kids out too, which is no small feat. And Ern and I could just fall back into the easy conversations we always have, a product of 49 years of friendship. I've mentioned the challenges of keeping future thoughts/anxieties/fears from wrecking my head, and good company from the best of friends has that magical ability to pull you right into the present moment with that person.

My other good friend, Tim, picked me up from chemo. We grabbed some Soup Peddler on the way home, and then chatted on and off for another couple of hours back at the house. What I always appreciate about Tim is just real conversation about what's going on...the highs and the lows and all that stirs up in us. I always feel seen and heard fully in those conversations...what a gift. I aspire to offer that back to Tim and others.

Tim and I also met up the previous week (the non-chemo "good" week) at his studio in his backyard. Tim is a talented musician AND knows a ton about recording too. We had some fun just working to create some music from scratch. Music, both playing music myself and listening to it, have been some of the best therapy in all of this. It's such a visceral experience, and has always been healing for me. (Maybe it's not a coincidence that the band I played the most gigs with was called "spinach"? And quick shout-out to Logan Brothers band crew - y'all are as good of humans as they make em.)

I'm including a pic from our Thanksgiving celebration yesterday with our close friends. Rachel, Melissa and Moxie, along with Tim, his wife, and son, are part of what we have dubbed our "framily", and we meet up every other Friday for dinner. They truly feel like family, and yesterday was just the Thanksgiving we needed in this moment.

So, I find myself thankful for so many things right now. Friends that are family. Conversations that get down into the roots of who we are. Music, both playing and listening, and how it resonates into your bones. The best partner I could ask for in Stacey. Couch time and a good show with my kids. And the power of community (thank YOU).

Wishing all the best to you and yours.

With much love and gratitude...Matt