Secrets
5.5.2020
One of the surprising, life-giving things that has happened since I started chemotherapy is laundry. Yep. Laundry. I am slowly and steadily catching up on laundry. The piles of laundry in my basement have been there at least a year. The essentials were washed but non-essentials were pushed to the bottom of the pile, shoved into baskets to wait for another time and never emptied. Until now. Somehow I’ve been getting through chemotherapy, homeschooling three children and cleaning up the laundry excess in my basement. Outgrown, old winter bundles? Washed and ready for the next kid. Extra bedding from a February sleepover? Fresh, folded and put away. It’s amazing!
Speaking of amazing-and since I’m sharing all my dirty little secrets-let’s talk about how I’m rocking chemotherapy. When I started cancer treatment nine and a half years ago I also started Healing Touch and acupuncture regularly. With both therapies every week I was able to do away with nausea medications, a drug that boosted my white blood count and feel better too. Fast forward to this spring and I’m being even more extreme.
As soon as I knew chemotherapy was coming I was scared and desperately wanted to make it less bad than it should be. I had an intuition about fasting. I read summaries, medical research, anything I could find. With my doctors’ approval, I resolved to fast. Now, I’ve got quite a routine going: 60 hour water-only fasts. Acupuncture. Chemo day exercise. More exercise. Healing Touch. Rest. Repeat.
I start fasting two nights before chemotherapy. I have acupuncture one day before. On infusion day, I get moving as soon as they hook me up to the IV. What started out as marching in place has transformed into dancing. With headphones on and an IV line dragging about I aim to move at least 2 hours and 15 minutes of the four hour infusion. I have been amazed at how exercise destroys waves of nausea. The day after chemo I exercise and break my fast according to how my stomach feels. Two days after chemotherapy I relax into Healing Touch and prepare to ride out the worst of things. Exercise is off the table on these days but I add it back in as soon as I can. From day four and beyond, I take a slow ride toward feeling like myself again.
There you have it! All my secrets have been revealed. Fasting for Wednesday’s infusion has already begun. I try not to dread it. I’ll just do like I did the other times. I’ll not eat, throw in another load of laundry and keep dancing.