This afternoon, my third period of serious fasting came to an end. I can’t say it was a minute too early. Sticking with the regime of not eating was much harder than the first two times. The fast felt quite a bit longer. Mathematically, it was only about eight hours more. But it stretched over four days instead of three which, mentally, put an additional strain on me.
The two times before, dinner had been my last meal. Sleeping through the night had then emptied my batteries and surely put my metabolism into some sort of resting state from which I awakened it only two-and-a-half days later. My body had already settled in before I consciously started fasting. The first twelve hours were over. This time, the fast had started after breakfast. My body was readying itself for a regular day and had no idea of what was coming.
Then there was the chemo. This can’t make anything easier, even if it – as it does in my lucky case – doesn’t make things much harder. I was warned of new side effects, in particular diarrhea and excessive sweating. To keep the sweating at bay, they gave me a shot of atropine – a substance not too dissimilar in effect from what Socrates ingested to end his life. I didn’t sweat but have no idea whether that was because of the injection. There was no control. And diarrhea? How do you do that with guts thoroughly emptied over two days?
The one effect that I noticed is that I got very tired. In the second half of the therapy session, I fell asleep while nurses were fiddling with tubes entering my body. It’s a good way to undergo therapy, but it’s hard to get up and go home afterwards. On the way, I had to pick up the boy from childcare. At home, I went to bed as soon as Flucha and the girl arrived and relieved me of child-minding and in particular child-entertaining duties. I didn’t sleep but had no energy to do anything but rest. And obviously I wasn’t eating.
In the end I slept rather poorly because my legs tingled with tiredness and what I interpreted as the onset of protein breakdown. The worry that my body is eating the muscles I built over the past half year didn't give me any peace. I will need to follow the doctor’s advice and eat lots of protein and especially fat to build up reserves in the ten days between two fasting periods.
I’ve read repeatedly that fasting dampens the side effects of chemotherapy because the starving cells are in their own version of lockdown and resistant to drugs that target rapidly dividing cells. In line with this, I didn’t feel any discomfort beyond what fasting does to me. There’s a slight taste of the fluorouracil in my mouth, but that’s really it. Have I mentioned how lucky I am? I wouldn’t survive three sessions of chemo with serious nausea, loss of appetite and persistent diarrhea.
Today was not quite as bad as yesterday. I shrewdly cut my day in half, with a morning at home – one tea, no food – followed by an afternoon in the office – one tea, no food. This made the day seem much shorter. When I arrived in the office, I had to contend with the impossible temptation of an open box of Cailler chocolates that a generous colleague had deposited behind my desk for everyone to share, but then I spent most of the afternoon in meetings.
As the minute hand slowly crawled into the fifth hour, I broke my 78-hour fast. I was more exhausted – physically and mentally – than hungry and in a kind of stupor. I finished half a bag of nuts I had in the office and dug into the chocolates, rather mechanically and without real enjoyment.
Tonight, Flucha cooked a fine dinner of tuna steak, princess potatoes and green beans which, remembering my doctor’s words, I generously drenched in butter. A heavy dessert topped it off, and I was almost full. A jar of olives and a few thick slices of chorizo de bellota got me through the evening. I’m still carrying the pump but a restful day lies ahead. I’ve come to appreciate these a lot lately.
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