Do You Feel Good?

So many titles come up for today; Three Is A Charm?  The Longest Day, Some Hints Of Hope, Chemo day III. Almost went with The Longest Day  but I think I will go with the sound in my head, Do You Feel Good.

Wednesday is significant was the last chemo and 30 out of the 35 radiation treatments. It it also a difficult hard, long, long, very long day. We are up early it takes me a long time to eat, even something like oatmeal. We leave home about 7AM and get to Kaiser at 7:45 AM. They take me in quickly this time and have an IV in before Susan is done parking the car. But the chemo treatment will end up taking 6 hours. During the session I talk to the doctor and tell her I have three elements in my life right now: managing pain, eating and sleeping. The sleeping medication was  not working so she, meaning I, will try a different medication. Pain is managed by the more frequent use of pain killers, still well below maximum dose limits. As to weight, two doctors and several nurses are amazed that I have actually put on a couple pounds over the last two weeks and I am still the healthy weight I was three months ago. They don’t say amazing but they all comment. I explain  that Susan is very diligent in pushing food and I present an image of the French force feeding geese to make pate. After chemo I walk several blocks to the radiation treatment. Just another day there. And later we meet with the staff radiation oncologist. She is also impressed with my weight management and is quite cheery about ‘only 5 treatments remaining’. She does mention that basic recovery takes a month or two and the two effects that take the longest to recover are taste and dry mouth, which can take a couple years. 

Although physically exhausted and plenty of pain to go around I feel emotionally lifted. 

Don’t know why but an old Richie Havens song plays in my head its Run Shaker Life/Do You Feel Good? I like it as I can just rock back and forth to the sound, deals with rough times and still asks "Do you feel good” and I can answer, at least emotionally, I feel good.

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