Not Dead Yet !: between meals, cramp and sunburn

Shades of "the early days" ! Thoughts churning, keeping me awake, may as well get them into this blog ! So:

My actual "chemotherapy" tablet is Temo-something. I take one a day, before breakfast. Sounds easy?

Original instructions were: take an anti-nausea, wait half an hour, take Temo, wait half an hour, eat breakfast. Easy enough but it means getting up an hour before breakfast, with not much chance of getting to sleep again. Then I dropped the anti-nausea tablet.

So: take a Temo, wait half an hour, eat breakfast. Okay, better.

I re-read the instructions. Mention it to Dr Tsoi (oncologist). The key point is -- I discover -- to swallow the Temo "between meals". Or, "when the stomach is empty". And, Keep the stomach empty for another half hour... or more. Now, I wake up at random times of night. If I'm past half-way between finishing dinner and starting breakfast -- I'll get up, take a Temo, go back to sleep. Which works for me.

Have I correctly interpreted the minor variations in the instructions? Am I satisfying the *intent* of taking Temo on an "empty stomach"? Is water -- or cordial -- okay as part of an empty stomach? It's now 3:30am, I've drunk a lot of water and some cordial. I'll wait a while, take my Temo, finish this post, go back to bed. I hope that is acceptable :-) I do my best.

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Part of the reason that I am up and about is that I just had a minor -- but not trivial -- cramp.

I wake up, get up, for the usual reason. Decide that there is not enough of the usual reason so I drink a couple of glasses of water. Back to bed.

I notice -- as I'm lying in bed, thinking & dozing -- that my right foot feels just a little bit more tingly than usual. That tingling -- pins & needles across the sole of the foot -- has been with me since the early days of treatment. Wikipedia mentions it but can give no cause. Doctors simply ignore it. Anyway...

The tingling grows. Becomes a cramp across the top of the toes. As far as I know there are no muscles there, it's cramping tendons. The cramp spreads up a small muscle -- perhaps as big as my little finger -- which runs up the side of my shin. Ouch!

I very carefully move my foot, my leg. Ease it so it does not get worse. Am finally able to rub it, sit up, push it the right way... remove the cramp. This is a lot easier than when the much larger calf muscle cramps! It's painful but only 3 on a scale of 1 to 10.

I'm awake now! May as well go downstairs and take my Temo. First, though, several glasses of water, the usual post-cramp treatment. (It seems to work to prevent instant recurrence.) And some cordial because there is only so much water I can drink... Cordial? Does that still count as an "empty stomach"? Hmmm. Okay, I'll wait a few minutes before taking the Temo. I do my best to follow instructions :-)

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And then there's the sunburn...

A side-effect of radiation treatment is radiation burn. No sunscreen allowed on the top of the head -- it would interfere with radiation treatment -- so I wear a hat in the sun. Yet the tops of my ears are red and peeling. And they are directly under the brim of my hat.

I always suncream the backs of my hands because years ago they lost all pigment. Now the sun burns all the way through the suncream. My cheek bones -- just below the eyes -- are red and peeling. Parts of my skin are like the surface of Mars :-)

Ah well. Just two more days of radiation treatment. I hope. For now. Today, I'm feeling well. And cheerful. Into the future -- I hope to at least avoid the savage ups and downs of the past few weeks!

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Back to bed. Sleep till breakfast. Then Deb will drop me off for head and gut radiation. After which, well cooked, I will walk home again... Slowly :-)