They warned me it would get rough. The word “rough” is an understatement. I think the appropriate explanation could have been – It will feel like ROUGH sandpaper with tiny little daggers dragging across the burned skin that isn’t even red anymore because it’s actually turned into the color purple on the delicate area of your tooshie. That would have made more sense and been more accurate. Yowee, ouchie, and other choice words now come from the room where I visit Cindy Loo. Oh, and I forgot to mention the muscle spasms too, yikes!

But wait…there’s more….It’s common to get an infection in the lady parts area because the radiation is making the tiny little lymph nodes angry. Yup, there is swelling too, oh the joy! They started me on an antibiotic Thursday. The doc said it was already looking slightly better yesterday, thank goodness.

It’s the last weekend before finishing my chemo and radiation courses of my treatment, I am more confined to bed. For now, Travis will be serving appetizers and dinner bedside in between my regular medications, the pain pills, and muscle relaxers.

Relatively speaking, I had been doing pretty well up until this point. These kinds of complications usually start around the third week of treatments. I had been able to dodge some of these bullets until now; my FIFTH week of this part of the journey. All of a sudden, everything snuck up on me. My brief, slow walking sessions on the treadmill have devolved into waddling exercises. I’m sure quite a few Mama’s out there understand. My medical team advised me yesterday to stop all walking, waddling or any other unnecessary movement to help reduce irritation in that sensitive area.

Here’s the real fun, once my final two radiation treatments are over and done with this coming Tuesday, everything gets worse before it starts getting better. Both the chemo & radiation side effects are cumulative, meaning they will still be building for a while before they subside. That’s when the real healing can begin, I’m sure looking forward to that day!

As awful as all this is, I can’t tell you how grateful I am to have such wonderful medical care; how fortunate I am that there is a treatment, even if it sucks for a while. I’m also so lucky to have a such a great friend, Cherish, working at the university as a pharmacist. She prepared my first and last rounds of chemotherapy while keeping Travis and me upbeat during a stressful time. Yesterday, my home care nurse was at our house with me. We had a medication question and Cherish quickly got back with an answer. Thanks to her, I’m now less nauseated this weekend. Thanks girl!