BEP Round 2 Day 10

I wanted to post an update since its been a couple of days to basically let everyone know how the "Hell-Week recovery" was going.  The first round I had a rough couple of days followed by stark improvement day to day as the week went on, with me feeling kinda normal by Wed and basically back to my own snarky self by Thursday give or take (within reason at least).

However this round has been much rougher on me, and I share this because as the chemo rounds "add up" in my system this will happen.  So for example, we tried to baby my stomach as much as possible the last day or so of hell week chemo and while it helped a bit at first we ended up down basically the same path of digestive system mutiny as the first round.  In addition, this time its lasting quite a bit longer.  I am STILL fighting my stomach on nearly everything I put in my mouth even water.  Have you ever stuffed your self on something you knew was going to make you feel bad like Taco bell or something you know causes you stomach problems?  When you are done eating, forcing every bit you can you can still kinda feel it up in your esophagus and when you burp or move the wrong way you can kinda feel the food right there.  In addition, you have this really overly heavy feeling in your stomach and it protests with gurgling etc etc for hours.  Since you have so much food in your stomach you also get very physically drained (think a really heavy lunch then back at your desk at work... eyes weary).  Now imagine all of this for someone who ate a 120 calorie soup and some water!!!  Every time I eat anything my digestive system pretends its the end of the world.  In addition to that, my taste buds are totally out of wake so almost nothing is actually appetizing to eat it all tastes like bland blah crud or worse turns my stomach.

Now all of this has led to me not being able to eat much of anything, and certainly not much of it when I do so I am seriously calorie deficient I am sure which is adding to the overall fatigue and cruddy feeling.  I am at a bit of a loss to "turn the corner" on this one honestly, if I could do a fwe days of 2500->3500 calories and get it moving through my system perhaps I could make a come back but I can't seem to stomach it.  One idea I had was to get a bunch of those Ensure meal replacement things and just try and force myself to drink X every Y hours to add up to a decent calorie intake for the day.. but those aren't exactly balanced meals and they are crazy loaded with sugar.

The other thing I have noticed about this rounds recovery time is that last time if I felt tired, and slept I would at least feel marginally better when I woke up.  So sleeping = feeling better, this time that's not really the case my tiredness is much more deep and profound such that sleeping doesn't really aid or cure it.  Again this could be both the added round of chemo and the lack of calories adding to this effect I am not sure.

Now on to the good news, I do actually feel a bit better today and I am going to focus on eating as much as I can and drinking water etc etc .. the normal drill.  I really just wish there was some magic bullet.. take X pill or eat a bunch of Y and it would solve this but that doesn't seem to be the case.  I am holding in there though, and I KNOW I will feel better eventually its just taking more time than I would like!!!!

BTW my fingers are crossed that my Dr decides 3 rounds is enough, 1 more round of this is more than enough for me I think hahahaha the thought of 2 more rounds is a bit much to take right now but I know I will do whatever is needed....