This past Thursday, the 19th, my 4th chemo infusion finally happened. (It had been rescheduled, and then rescheduled again).

Learning my lesson from past infusions, I was all bundled up, and a lovely blanket (thank you, Aunt Donna!) kept me nice and cozy.

This infusion went .. dare I say it? Not bad. Certainly, much better than the prior two infusions. There was no nasty mania to contend with (which was the problem with infusion #3).

I believe much credit for this is due to the changes that I requested through prior negotiation: no antihistamines, and the inclusion of lorazepam (Ativan) up front. While they didn’t completely avoid antihistamines this time, they left out the Zyrtec, which was clearly the culprit for me going crazy last time. They still insisted on my taking Pepcid (another type of antihistamine), and fortunately I didn’t react to that. And, lovely lorazepam helped keep me calm.

So – lesson learned: cancer patients, advocate for yourself during the treatment process! Consider approaching the discussion like I did — as a negotiation. For me, this really worked.

The last few days have been hard — which is par for the course, post infusion. I don’t recollect much of the pump disconnect day (Saturday); I was pretty out of it that day. Big thanks to my friend Dorje for chaperoning me to the pump disconnect appointment that afternoon.

Yesterday (Sunday) was challenging and it’s in that most frustrating of categories for me: “not sure how to articulate it.” For lack of any other term, I’ll call my many problems of yesterday “bodily anxiety.” Intermittent periods of rapid heartbeat, sore throat, numbness in various parts of my body, headaches. My guess is that this was all somehow associated with the extreme constipation that hits me after every infusion. What I’ve found repeatedly through this year, is that my worst moments of inexplicable bodily anxiety end up relating to bowel issues. Like, when there is a lot that needs to come out, but (for whatever reason) isn’t doing that .. my body freaks out.

What I find really puzzling is that these bodily anxiety episodes don’t relate to my, you know, bowels area. It’s like every other part of my body lights up and goes crazy. I guess it’s some sort of mind-gut thing that I am particularly sensitive to?

I am feeling better this morning, but due to the travails of yesterday, am taking today off work. Hopefully will be feeling more normal tomorrow.

Somewhere in the haze of the last few days, Spotify’s algorithms led me to discover the enchanting music of Benoit Pioulard. Right up my musical alley, which I admit is a very narrow niche. He’s interesting in that he’s both an ambient composer and a pop artist (soft, melodic stuff).

Here’s an example of one his ambient tracks:

And one of his vocal tracks: