Reluctant soldier

I hate cancer. I hate how my life has been compromised by it. Everyday I have to deal with a slew of health problems. It's tiring. I'm tired of gritting my teeth and clenching my fists as pain randomly surges though my body. I'm tired of going into a fetal position whenever with my stomach churns angrily.  I'm tired of battling nausea.

 

In fact, my latest battle with nausea resulted in a sprained foot. As I violently vomited into the toilet while kneeling on the balls of my foot, I tore some foot ligament. So I've been moving around in crutches for a few weeks. My hands hurt; my armpits numbing; and my good foot is becoming a bad foot. My limited mobility is like a reflection of the limits of my life with cancer - what I cannot do; what I cannot have.
 

I'm tired of fighting. I want a break. If only I could rest on the sidelines and watch myself prevail without dealing out the punches and suffering the bruises. Unfortunately, it's an endless war where rest stops are nonexistent and there is no choice but to march on.

Should I be worried?

Recently, I have been experiencing much more discomfort, such as more nausea/vomiting, and muscle and bone pains. I've also felt tightness in my chest, which caused me to have shortness of breath. I panicked thinking it could be a heart attack and called the hospital. The doctor did not think this was heart related and instructed me to continue monitoring these symptoms.

These symptoms have also led me to get scans for a possible explanation. Perhaps the current treatment is not working, and I may need a new treatment. Hopefully this is not the case, as the current treatment is manageable. It would be nicer to think that these aches and pains were the result of the drugs beating cancer to death. But for now, I just have to wait for the scan results and hope for the best.

Update
Scans show that almost everything appears to be stable. Thank goodness! I definitely would like to know why I have these issues, but I'm happy knowing that everything is stable and I will stay the course for the current treatment.

My Dilemma

Tarceva didn't work for me. The only thing Tarceva did was give me reptile skin cover with pimples and an inflamed red nose. I started another treatment (alimta and avastin). I still have nausea, but it has been much kinder to me. As part of my treatment regimen, I take steroids the day before, the day of, and the day after treatment to keep my nausea mostly under control. Steroids also give me more energy to do things that would normally take a bit more effort. Unfortunately, all this energy keeps me up at night despite taking sleep aids.

So my dilemma is whether to take the steroids to keep the nausea at bay, or to forgo the steroids and deal with nausea everyday for over a week, but get good sleep. I flip back and forth for each treatment. I decided to take it this week, because I didn't want to deal with the nausea from the last treatment. Today, I added swimming to my gym routine in an effort to expend as much energy as possible. I'm tired! But, hopefully, I will get a good night's sleep.