Christmas was dark this year. There are almost no markets. Restaurants and cafés are closed. Some ski resorts are open and promise fun and sun, but I don’t want to take the children or indeed myself up there without a lodge to warm up in after a few hours in the snow. The valley is covered in low-hanging clouds. The temperature doesn’t stray far outside +1 and -1 degrees Celsius. Sometimes it rains. When it does, the clouds are darker and it feels as if night were about to fall at two in the afternoon.
I have quickly and completely adapted to the conditions. Since Saturday, when I cycled to the bakery for breakfast rolls, I haven’t left the house. I haven’t even moved much. I spent most of the last few days on the sofa. If things got bad, I retired to bed. Bright moments were when I built the new marble track with the children and then taught the girl to build it herself. She did a great job turning instructional images into a construction that was exactly right, and kept her patience throughout. I also played trains with the boy. I didn’t write a thing and didn’t do anything positive.
It wasn’t just the gloomy weather and the Covid-enforced darkness that made me this way. I felt so poorly that I just couldn’t do more. I was trying to get better by giving my body near complete rest. It’s not something my body is used to. I don’t know if it’s something my body knows how to handle.
The first days, right around Christmas, were the worst. I felt like shit. There was no need to identify specific symptoms. I was without energy, exhausted and sometimes dead tired. I suffered no pain but constant physical discomfort that I couldn’t pin down. During the day, I read books, listened to music and stared into space. Sometimes I even skipped brushing the children’s teeth, my one remaining chore in the house. Flucha does everything else, cleaning, cooking, bathing the children, shopping, without a single complaint. It’s amazing.
Often, when I tried speaking, I ended up coughing. I didn’t eat much and didn’t drink any alcohol. Christmas dinner was almost wasted on me, though it was a good one. Every night, I watched a couple of episodes of Saul and then collapsed into bed. I slept without getting rest, waking up a dozen times because the liquid behind my right lung forced me to sleep in one very specific way. My body responded to this restriction with tensions and muscular pain.
A few days later, after I had started with the new chemo program, things started to get slightly better, but so slightly that there was a deterioration for almost every improvement. My lung seemed to have a bit more capacity. It’s still far from normal but might indicate a reduction in the fluid level. I’d be so indescribably happy if this were the case. I haven’t taken a deep breath in a long time. My energy has increased a bit and a fair share of my appetite has returned. At the same time, I can now describe specific complaints that were earlier lost in the general misery.
Something is wrong with my digestion. I feel occasional sharp pain (that I don’t want to overinterpret) paired with rumbling guts. My lung is still not a happy place. In addition to the liquid-filled pleural sac, pain is emanating from my left lung. Most of the time, I’m miserably cold. I’m shivering under two thick sweaters while the boy runs around the flat half naked. At night, I sweat. On the upside, I sleep much better.
Tomorrow, I’ll be seeing my doctor to evaluate the first few days of chemotherapy and the state of my health. I’m curious about what he will say. Will he find that the lung has improved? Will he say that all I’m experiencing is ultimately related to this? We will see. There’s obviously no point discussing side effects. If there were any, they’d get lost under everything else that ails me at the moment. Is that a good thing? I think at the very least I can make a strong case for a doubling of the dose.
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