Nerves, nerves, nerves.

Nerves! Who needs 'em right?

Those things aren't important... are they?

Well, apparently they friggen are. Super important. Especially the ones in your feet and legs.

And guess what? Having six rounds of five days of straight chemotherapy drugs (five drugs to be exact) being pumped into your jugular vein is going fuck up your nerves.

Yeah, it got rid of the cancer. And that's peachy. It really is. I'm grateful to be alive. I'm grateful to be in remission.

But it sucks to know that I'm going to be living with all these long term issues because of it.

Doctors have a lovely little term for this nerve pain/damage/numbness. Let's get technical here.

The nerves that are the farthest away from your brain are called peripheral nerves. Chemo hates those nerves. Like really hates it. It walks up and punches them in the throat.

The fancy term for this nerve damage is chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy.

And let me tell you, it's pure hell. It's worse in the morning and at night. I wake up in the morning and it feels like my feet- especially in my ankles- are in a vice grip. The ache is so deep it feels like my bones are going to shatter. I can barely walk and I have to hobble my way around the house until it finally lessens up. That's just the morning.

Now the rest of the day it's not too bad until evening unless I have to do some serious walking. That's when the pain begins in earnest. It travels up from my feet into my lower calves and my knees. It's so hard to describe nerve pain. It's different than muscle pain. It's deeper and much more shattering.

So that being said, this whole thing has me pretty grumpy. I'm going to be seeing the doctor again for this ASAP because it appears to be getting worse instead of better. There's no known medicine that really works (from what I've been told) for it but I find that a lame answer. There's gotta be something.

Survivorship is a bittersweet thing isn't it? We're so lucky to be alive. But we're left with this shaken up life that we did not have before. How do you go back to how you were before when you find yourself experiencing all these physical disabilities that you have no idea how to cope with? How do you communicate this to others? Especially in the work place?

Invisible disabilities are the worst.

The only plus side is I get a three year handicap tag for my pain and suffering. This wasn't a big deal in Wisconsin but in a place like Fort Collins this is HUGE. Parking here is a nightmare. Hence why everyone rides bikes. So thankfully, we get the hookup everywhere we go. If we decide to go for lunch in Old Town we can literally park on the same block as where we're going. Which is just down right rare in this area. It definitely comes in handy on campus too- it's an absolute lifesaver. So there's one perk!

In other, less grumpy news, I have a hair update for you!. It's coming in fast. At this point I'm pretty much done with wigs. They're ten times more uncomfortable than they were without any growing hair and I frankly don't give a damn anymore. I really don't. I've navigated the hard task of deciding whether to inform my new work and confided in a few of my colleagues and supervisors. Everyone has been real neat about it so far. No big surprise really- us English folks are empathetic folks. Most of the time. I don't plan on telling my students- I just don't think that conversation needs to happen in the classroom. Especially when I'm overwhelming them with information in their freshman year. I might just show up without a wig one day and say, "Woah! I got a haircut!" and that's that.

All the little things you never thought you'd have to deal with. It's stressful.

But viola! Check out my hairs! At the point of this picture we're officially 12.5 weeks out from my last chemotherapy treatment.

We're getting there!!