26 Days Later

Twenty-six days. Ten treatments. That was all it took to undo most of the damage from chemotherapy to my peripheral nervous system.

I had no pain in my hands. And my feet? They were not completely pain free, but the improvement was unbelievable.

The best way to explain this is to follow the medication trail:

May 2013: I swallowed 18 pills a day in an effort to deaden the debilitating bone pain that had taken over.
January 2014: My doctor changed my prescription to a new medication, which meant fewer pills, but more potency in side effects. And my daily pill regimen looked like this:

Since the medication combined with the painkillers left me drowsy, groggy and processing things at the speed of a 100 year old turtle, I avoided taking them until I came home from work. At which point, I felt like this:

Not much had changed by September 2014, although I had managed to get by with 2 fewer painkillers on a good day. But I still pretty much felt like this -

Then came May 2015. The breakthrough pain episode changed my prescription like this:

The net effect?

Then came FREMS. And 26 days later, the medication trail looked like this:

The medications were the same. But the anti-nausea meds? GONE. Heavy duty pain killers? ONE was enough.

And I began to feel like this: