Today is my second day of receiving cytarabine for the hyper CVAD protocol. It’s dripping through my IV as I write this. I realized today that half the drugs I’m on are drugs designed to mitigate side effects of chemotherapy. We’ll see how effective they are in the coming days. 

What I am definitely feeling today is more tired, and less hungry. I was on heavy doses of steroids during my first round of chemo, and they’ve had to quickly taper me off of them for this second round. The withdrawal involves quite a bit of fatigue. Thankfully, I’m not required to do anything all day except eat, sleep, receive medication and occasionally provide a urine sample. I’ve been able to manage so far. 

Sundays are better than weekdays at the hospital. There are way fewer people here, which means the Internet is faster and you don’t have to wait several minutes for an elevator. Tomorrow all the damn medical professionals and hospital workers will be back, clogging up the building trying to help people. I’m realizing now that that is quite a unique reason to not be looking forward to Monday. 

Until tomorrow,

Ethan Wissell