January

My first cycle of chemotherapy.

For my first challenge of 2023, I faced my first cycle of chemotherapy. This marked the beginning of my six months of treatment. I faced no shortage of difficulties at the start of this journey.

Before I continue, I want to acknowledge two things. The first is how fortunate I am. I am fortunate to be able to receive world-class medical care. I am fortunate for the support I have from friends, family, and strangers. I am fortunate that I have been given an excellent prognosis. I am fortunate with the life I had before this cancer, the life I have right now, and the life I have not lived yet.

The second thing I want to acknowledge is that I am sharing my own personal cancer journey. I speak for myself in what I share, and by no means am I trying to voice what others with cancer may be going through or have gone through. With these things being said, I will not deny that what I am currently going through is extremely difficult.

My first round of chemotherapy began on December 28th, 2022. As I watched the first dosage of chemo slowly enter my body through my IV, my mind could only wonder what lay ahead for me. Unfortunately, my first infusion did not go smoothly and turned out to be quite traumatic.

From the moment the first fluids entered my arm to the last drop I was given, my first infusion lasted nearly 7 hours. I had three different IVs, an infiltration of chemo, and a sizeable superficial blood clot. It has been over eight weeks since this infusion, and I am still recovering from these complications. Not only am I still recovering physically, but I am still working through this event mentally. Just thinking and talking about it stirs up unwanted feelings such as nausea.

This is the first event in my life that I have ever had trouble sharing with others. I am very fortunate, however, that from a young age, it was ingrained in me to talk about my feelings. This event has reiterated the power and importance of working through my feelings rather than burying them inside.

As I have talked about and written about this experience, the pain of this event has gotten fainter. Going through this and feeling these benefits empowers me to encourage others to talk through their hardships. I know it is not easy, but we owe it to ourselves to be vulnerable, as being tough in the present will not solve the issue for our future selves.

As I started my adjustment to life during treatment, I was reminded by someone of what I wrote last year:

"When I start something new, it is easy for me to feel uncomfortable and overwhelmed. To help get back to solid ground, I remind myself of what I have done before and what my determination will help me accomplish. It is very comforting to find this reminder at the beginning of any new challenge I may face."

I took this a step further and quickly compared starting chemotherapy with my experience of learning how to drive a stick shift as a 16-year-old. My first car was a manual 1995 Honda Civic. The day I got the car was the same day as my first and only lesson in how to drive a stick shift. As I drove home from the lesson in the car, I stalled the engine at every single stop. A month later, things were better, but they were not great by any means. And six months later, things were still bumpy when I drove, but the important thing at this point was that I knew what I was doing and what to expect. As with this treatment journey, I may not know what I am doing early on, and in six months, things might not be perfect, but at that point, I will know how to handle it.

With my treatment comes common side effects. Following an infusion, I start feeling crappy immediately, lasting for about a week. I have to deal with nausea as if on a small boat out at a rough sea. I also experience pain in my body as the chemo melts my tumor. Along with these feelings, I have become very fatigued and tired. I used to be someone that would wake up before my alarm and jump right out of bed right when it went off. Since treatment, I have been hitting snooze more and more often.

In the week following treatment, I feel better day by day. Through all of this, my best days are about 80% of my good days before cancer. And given the aggressive chemo regimen, I feel my best just in time to be hit again.

About 4 weeks after my first treatment, I started to lose my hair. This was a tough one, not because I was going to have a buzzed head but because of what it signaled. Before I lost my hair, the only image I had that indicated I had cancer was the photo of the PET Scan showing the large mass in my chest. This was all internal, and no one could see it. As soon as I lost my hair, though, I felt like the world would know as I fit into the stigma of what a cancer patient looks like. It was another marker, and a big one, in the fact that there is no avoiding this journey.

To help me get through these challenging side effects, I take on a somewhat backward mindset. Looking at the photo above of the tumor in my chest, I clearly needed some serious medical intervention to get better. That intervention just so happens to make me feel terrible. And so, ultimately, the mindset I have is that I feel very crappy because I am getting healthy again.

As I came to this realization, I thought beyond what I am going through right now and looked at my life with this mindset. It was never very clear to me in the moment, but I can see now that the hardships I faced in the past made me a better version of myself.

Whether that be my dad's passing, my deployment to the Middle East, or my time in tough jobs, I always came out stronger on the other side. And that is what I hold onto right now. I may not see it clearly when I am nauseous, tired, or when I accidentally try to wash my hair, but on the other side of this is a better version of myself.

And so, just as I wondered what this journey would entail when I watched the first traces of chemo entering my arm, I can only wonder what I will be like when this is all said and done. I wonder what I will have learned and what will follow me into my next chapter. Until then, I go day by day, with excitement, to look back at this journey with the feeling of being fortunate.