cats

Three year (end of) chemo long term side effects update.

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Whew! What a mouthful!

But it’s October, which means it’s pink ribbon and breast cancer awareness month, and we’re almost at the three year anniversary of my last chemo (please let me know if it isn’t three years; quite honestly, I have absolutely no idea).

Long term side effects update. Cos yes, I have plenty, and no, there isn’t enough information about them.

Chemo brain

No change. Some days are better, some are worse, at least people are so used to me not finding words or saying the wrong thing or stopping mid sentence and having absolutely NO idea what I was talking about, so it’s not really a problem. And I have no shame – I’ll tell new people that I’m not stupid, honest, just have severe cognitive damage.

Lea is still a really helpful secretary cat, so sometimes if what I write ends up pure gibberish, I can still blame her.

F(l)atigue

Still an issue. Not as bad as it was, but I can’t really plan two things in one day – cos sometimes something as simple as going to my physical therapist exhausts me completely and I spend the rest of the day in bed.

Blood work

My blood has never been better. So yay chemo! It worked! It actually fucking worked!!!

Physiology

Body is behaving nicely. Thanks to physical therapist #2, my knees are functioning, my legs and thighs no longer feel like logs and I can run up and down the Potemkin stairs. Or up and down a mountain. Go me!

Which also means I can drive again, without pain in my knees and thighs, and Billy is The Best Car Ever. Or Guglielmo which is his fancy Italian name, since he’s Italian and all.

He needed a check up this August (PKK – periodic roadworthiness test). 16 years old (yes, he had a birthday party) and 212′ km under his belt – and all I needed to fix was replace the brake wires. He’s such a darling!

And the Tamoxifen which I have to take for the next 7 years or so – I love it. It is fucking awesome. Ya know my hormones that have been quirky and insane all my life? Tamoxifen gives me an extra boost of testosterone and progesterone and it’s doing wonders for my muscles and joints and everything else. 

Heart rate is – constant. It’ll probably never be as good as it once was, but by running up and down hills in the forest I keep it under control. It’s stopped racing like mad just cos I’m thinking of doing something.

Mental stuff

Still kinda inhibition free which is amazing. Chicago in December was fantastic and there is no way old Siri had made it there. Making new friends is fun. Compromises? Still not very good at that, but at least I’ve learned how to write formal FU letters.

Insomnia

Can be useful, too. No jet lag. You can drive through the night without needing sleep. 

More importantly, you get used to it. You get used to all sorts of bad stuff, to be fair.

Is there no bad shit?

Of course there is. There is always shit. In my case, the WORST long term side effect is that I have become The Most Attractive Being in the forest for all insects and arachnids. Flies, mosquitoes, ticks, wasps, deer keds, blackflies, they’re all SO attracted to me and love me and can’t stay away. Which is bloody annoying when I’m in the forest. Something happened to my blood and I’ve gone from dull and uninteresting to the number one target.

I have an eating disorder. Chemo threw my olfactory senses out the window and I more often than not struggle to eat properly. It’s difficult to explain. I’ll want something in the store, buy it, get home – and can’t eat it. Just thinking about eating it makes me queasy. All I want is beer, wine and chocolate.

Bad shit is mostly about how you take it. If you let shit overrun you, then it will. If you decide that you’re going to find the good stuff in bad shit, then you’ll find it. Tomatoes grown in sheep shit are the best, after all.

No tits

Seriously? No one notices… 🙂

I used to be good at this shit.

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I used to be able to write awesome reviews with no effort at all.

Didn’t cost me a calorie.

Now I’m struggling with the first sentence of three different concert reviews, two of which I have written but f*ck knows where they are. I think they’re stuck in some kind of kittycyberspace. I must admit that writing in Norwegian might be one reason my creative juices are stagnant but it’s a crap excuse cos it’s supposed to be my mother tongue… right.

Listening to old Laibach to see if that will help. And I do mean old stuff. Enjoy!

Life with a tech savvy kitty

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This is Lea.

Lea is my rescue cat who was hit by a car twice, survived against all odds, and is now the weirdest and cuddliest cat ever. But just to me. She hates just about everyone else.

Lea can take off for weeks at a time, but when she’s home, she prefers being on my lap at all times. Which can be rather challenging if I’m working on my computer and she’s all I WANT CUDDLES. Sometimes she’ll be satisfied with just lying here. If I go somewhere, I have to remember to turn off my computer otherwise she’ll happily chat with anyone listening or update my status on Facebook (best case) or make system changes that aren’t always easy to fix (vertical screen is one of them).

She’s also a kitty with a mind of her own, especially when it comes to music.

As I am now dipping my toes into music journalism again, it means that I have to listen to a lot of different music from my computer. Editing concert photos and listening to new music is a form of multi tasking that kinda works for me.

I’m just not sure how to read her actions on these?

Lea snoring while I edit photos from Ministry @ Vulkan arena last June, listening to Wandering Stars. Or rather, snoring but twitching her tail.

I’ve been tipped off about an interesting Norwegian band called Sølvkre, which kinda reminds me of Nine Inch Nails’ instrumental work. This is Lea’s response to Ghosts.

I left Ghosts on and this is what I came back to. Culprit had hidden.

I am slightly concerned that she’s getting ever closer to cracking the code of net shopping. When I get a parcel in the post, I never know what I’ll find when I pick it up (also because I sometimes order stuff and chemo brain blocks it out so I get surprised by someone sending me a pressie!!!!).

Does your cat order stuff? Is the whole Paypal one touch thingy a really bad idea?

F(l)atigue

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I have no idea which silly person decided that the way I’m feeling now, can be described as “fatigue”. You don’t feel fat, you feel FLAT. So FLATIGUE is a much more appropriate word.

And it’s hitting me earlier. For the first three rounds of Taxotere, I had three high-energy (everything’s relative, right?) days and then three flat days. This time, flatigue hit on day three and the first two days weren’t exactly brimming with energy. But  four rounds in means I am at least half-way on my journey with yew. And they keep showing up – I think I may have to plant one or two, to remember this year, lest chemo brain sets in so badly I forget.

That was a joke. A crap one at that.

This is Lurven. If he were a human, he’d be a bit thick, with a beer gut and he would defo be your favourite uncle. IRL he loves stealing voles from the other cats cos they’re yummy (although he is a fierce hunter himself), he’s fiercely protective of his siblings and he just lurves his hoomins. He gets really worried when I’m ill, so yesterday I spent the first four hours of the day in bed with him on my shoulder, purring away as if to keep me safe.

Four hours is how long it took for me to actually scrape up enough energy to think about getting up, actually getting my body out of bed, putting on sweats, and going into the kitchen.

After eating some ‘food’ (with the fungal infection in my mouth, nothing tastes of anything so it’s more a case of finding something I can swallow) I went back to bed and he threw himself onto the duvet, found my shoulder and snuggled back in.

Nice, hard, steady purring. Nice massage. Too f(l)atigued to fall asleep, but at least I could focus on his purring and after another three hours I nodded off.

Today neuropathy set in as well. If you think three is a lucky number – sorry mate.

Or. Depends. I see Karjala is waiting for me to crawl under the bed covers again. Gussi is also skulking around the bedroom. Three cats, one for each symptom. See y’all when flatigue turns into fatigue…