PROGRESS: Day 10.7

This treatment cycle hasn’t been too bad in terms of side effects. While I’m very thankful to have a less harsh treatment, the higher frequency of treatment takes a different kind of toll. This blog helps to keep track of the side effects I experience, which, in turn, helps me to bring them up to my doctor. It actually also helps to remind me of when things will improve in the cycle of each one of my treatments. Basically, the things I always experience to some degree include:

• Heartburn
• Hot flashes
• Dryness (nose, eyes, skin, etc.)
• Hair shedding
• Mild fluid retention
• Weight gain
• Fatigue
• Insomnia on treatment night
• Mouth sores (occassionally)

Actually, when I write out that list, it makes me feel thankful that there aren’t more side effects or they aren’t worse. It certainly isn’t a walk in the park, but the physical side effects have been manageable. The hardest part of the physical side effects for me is just the reminder of the whole diagnosis and experience. It’s hard to remember that technically my cancer is gone (we hope) and this is all meant to be preventative. It still makes you feel like there is something wrong with you.

I do notice that my fatigue is extending a bit more from Friday through Sunday. Now that I truly feel like I’m coming into the home stretch, I think these treatment cycles will be the hardest. Tomorrow will be my second to last treatment!! And the most exciting thing is that, technically, I only have one more week of this left (well, the chemo). I will have my chemo treatment tomorrow and the my last chemo treatment just seven days later! It’s very exciting!

Other goings-ons

Despite the fatigue hitting me a bit harder, we were able to do a lot of fun things. My mom had to return home last Friday, so it was just me, Sean and Maddie for the weekend. We had a fun day at Kinder Farm park after Sean and I were both able to get in rides. Maddie was able to play on the playground and also see some pigs, piglets, goats and sheep!

On Sunday we went for a lovely 25 mile ride as a family! Maddie was excited about going on the ride as well. We hooked her up in our Burley trailer (one of our most favorite baby purchases) and headed out onto the Baltimore-Annapolis trail. On the way back, we stopped at a playground and had some lunch before heading home. Maddie actually fell asleep in the trailer on the way home, so it was a very easy ride back home.

Also, our neighborhood playground in the city finally opened back up! It has been closed since early Spring 2021. It was planned to reopen in Spring 2022, but it was pretty slow going for them. Probably they had supply chain issues, because the weather wasn’t all that bad for them to make progress, even in the winter. We went on Monday night and tonight! She absolutely loves it. It is supposed to have a fountain, but they haven’t turned that on for whatever reason.

Fitness goals update

I can report that I’ve done a really good job of maintaining my goal of five rides per week. One or two weeks I might have only gotten in four, but I think that is still pretty good! That feels like a really big accomplishment for me. I know not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to do that, so it really means a lot. As far as my cycling metrics go, my VO2 max and Functional Threshold Power (FTP) have completely tanked. I’m not quite sure where my FTP is at right now (it was around 188 Watts prior to all of this happening), but I’m pretty sure it’s closer to like 150. On Monday I did a structured workout and I had my FTP set to 150 W in Zwift and it was pretty hard. That leads me to believe it has dropped a fair bit. I haven’t been doing any structured cycling workouts and I haven’t been doing enough anaerobic workouts that would help to push that back up. But that’s probably a goal for after chemo is over!

Weight training has been a bit of a different story. It’s hard to feel motivated to do weight training for some reason. I enjoy riding my bike a bit more and then it takes up even more time to weight train. Cycling ends up getting prioritized and when I don’t feel like I have enough time, weight training gets sacrificed. That is true even when I’m not doing chemo though, which is probably the biggest reason it was hard for me to maintain weight training before. I’ve only really backed off the last two weeks, so I could still rally this week. “Do your best and forget the rest!” That’s what Tony Horton says!

Overall, I’m really excited that at my 11th treatment tomorrow. I know that I will have to deal with the side effects after that last treatment and that it will probably take a couple of weeks or months to fully recover. I’m a little anxious because even though I say “recover,” I also know that things aren’t going to go back to normal. I will still have my port and get Herceptin infusions (the HER2 targeted therapy) every three weeks for 9 more months, I will take a new medication (Tamoxifen) for many years and I will forever have my scars. I will also have to make it through radiation. But none of that is today and what will be, will be.