It’s Saturday, and I’m closing in on ending my first week of chemotherapy. I’m feeling much better since writing the last blog.

It feels like I was knocked down, but not knocked out, with my first flush of chemo. My energy’s rising. I feel like I could handle a 30-minute walk if I could count on the weather co-operating by briefly holding off the rain.

The light-headedness is gone. My body’s feeling warmer as my chemo-shocked central nervous system is working better to regulate its temperature. I’m only cold to the core first thing in the morning for a couple of hours until breakfast food converts to energy to warm me. Herbal teas help, but I do miss my morning java.

Somehow greeting the morning without a coffee is a missing piece to starting the day. But I know I can’t have coffee (I only drank one cup per day), black tea, colas and any other caffeinated beverages as they deplete fluids in my body that I’m trying to preserve to flush out the chemo.

My chemo nurse said the first three days are the worst in treatment. I concur.

My treatment was on Monday. I felt fairly normal for the first 36 hours. By Wednesday and Thursday I was sick and lethargic. I felt more out of sorts than sick. It was similar to but different than the flu, and not what I had expected.

Today, the treatment symptoms are becoming part of my new normal in living with cancer. I still have a dry mouth and my gums are getting sensitive with the required five times daily tooth brushing. The smell of food cooking still churns my stomach, so I’m limiting my exposure to kitchens and barbecue odors. Cold foods work best.

Chemo is also doing an interesting thing with my digestive tract. If you’ve ever been on a high dosage anti-inflammatory medicine and your stomach hurts and is upset, its similar to what it feels like with chemo. Except that this will go on for weeks versus a few days to treat an injury.

For the digestive upset, my medical oncology nurse recommended a minimum of two daily portions of yogurt to line the stomach against chemo irritation. It seems to work. I know when I need to have a yogurt snack, my stomach reminds me.

I now have a sense of taste and want to eat. But in these past two days, chemo again has changed how food tastes. Sweeter foods now taste more sweet (almost nauseating), acidy foods taste more acidic, and sour foods taste more sour. Bland foods seem to work best but have their limitations; coupled with my gluten intolerance, that takes me away from many comfort foods I’d like to have.

Chemo is teaching me all about new adventures in how to cook bland--blach! It’s similar to how I introduced bland foods to my kids when they were babies as they graduated from baby food to table food.

If this week’s reaction is a pattern in how my body accepts chemo treatments, and it should be according to my chemo nurse, then mentally and physically I know that the first three days are the worst. I can live with that, particularly now that I have gone through chemo this week.

Next week, with my lowest immunity in a chemo cycle arising, things may be different again in how I will feel. For now, yesterday and today are feel good days and I will take them as bonus gifts in this cancer journey.

The only other new, but not unexpected, symptom is the gradual loss of my hair. I can see small alleys on my scalp where the hair is starting to fall out. By the end of next week my chemo nurses tell me that the cocktail I’m on will have stripped me of all of my hair.

A bevy of caps and hats wait to be used to cover my head, keep it warm, and prevent heat loss and sunburn. My wig sits on its stand waiting for its debut, along with false eyebrows and eyelashes. Add these to my breast prosthesis and prosthetic bra, and I’m starting to feel like I’m cancer’s Bionic Woman of television folklore (circa 1976-78).

I continue on this cancer treatment journey as both the patient and the observer. I keep walking on this trail by moving forward with Strength, Courage, and Determination.