I’m on an awesome cocktail of medications to shut down hormone production. At least that’s the nutshell version. I’m also on a brand new drug that stops cancer cells from multiplying. So far it’s shown a lot of promise in my scans. And it’s great when I can take it. Problem is it depletes my white blood count and makes me feel pretty awful. So there are times I have to come off the drug that may be the most effective part of my treatment.

This is the thing with cancer treatment that sucks. You feel fine (except my experience with stage IV is a little different because of the bone mets. Bone mets hurt) and then along comes treatment to make you sick to get better. I wish I could drop some wisdom as far as this is concerned but it’s more an observation than anything else.

What’s confusing is identifying what is cancer discomfort versus side effect pain. Like I said, bone mets can hurt. I had a lesion in my hip that made it impossible to walk until I had radiation. The course of radiation was long (10 days) and the field was large (most of my pelvis and part of my spine). Needless to say, my gut got affected so I had bowel symptoms along with the standard radiation side effects, like fatigue.

Why I’m bringing this up is because I am choosing to suffer through all of this with the hope that I get better. And to me, that means two things. One, I’d like to feel better. Have a day where I feel normal again. Go to the gym. Take a run without pain. And two, maybe if I can wait it out for a few years, a cure will show up and I can really get rid of this thing.

So here’s to getting sick to get better. Or just to plain getting better.