Two Weeks of Chemo: Day 8

This is part of an ongoing two-week series. For more info, see this introductory post.

The most well known symptom of chemo, perhaps behind hair loss, is fatigue. Chemo wipes you out and it only gets worse over the course of your treatment. Initially, my energy level would only be affected for the first few days after a treatment, but now it wanes throughout each two-week cycle.

So, fatigue is an issue. Amusingly, you wouldn't know it from my chart at the doctor's office. They use a fatigue scale that goes from 0-4 but is skewed heavily toward the debilitatingly fatigued. "1" indicates that the patient is unable to complete day-to-day activities, "2" is for patients who are bed-bound for less than half the day, "3" for more than half the day, and "4" is for being completely bedridden. My oncologist won't even treat patients who would fall into the 3-4 categories, while I can never honestly report more than a "0." The usefulness of this scale escapes me.

Fatigue is also a tricky complaint to measure in reference to any specific treatment, due to the numerous confounding factors that can affect one's energy level. On the Friday mornings that I had my treatments during the school year, the nurse would ask if I was fatigued. And, after staying up late working on a lab report or essay, and it being the end of a generally overbooked week of activities, I would always be able to respond in the affirmative (though still as a "0" on the scale). But really, there are other equally important questions that should be asked. Did you get less than eight hours of sleep last night? Have you done more than your average amount of work in the past few days? Have you been drinking less than your usual amount of caffeine?

As I can answer "yes" to too many of the above questions today, let alone any genuine chemo-induced fatigue I may be feeling, I will leave this post on the shorter side and go get some sleep. I promise that tomorrow's post will be more exciting!

Back to Day 7.
Ahead to Day 9.