Saturday 2nd March 2019
“The greatest evil is physical pain” — Saint Augustine

I nearly slacked off blogging because there hasn’t been a lot going on today, but I thought better of it. I got the usual 9 hours sleep last night and was up just before 8am. I’d drunk a lot to flush the chemo so I was up a few times to pee as expected.

Normally, the Friday bleo shots don’t do anything but maybe give me a little phlegmy cough or a slight feeling of tightness in my chest. I’d complained over the last few weeks of mild tingling and pain in my fingers, and some sensitivity to heat. Peripheral Neuropathy.

Unfortunately today my fingers, particularly index fingers and thumbs, are really quite sore. This is making menial tasks (such as typing this right now) quite painful/uncomfortable. Things I’ve struggled with today have been pulling the ring pull on a can of beans, pressing buttons on the TV remote, stirring a cup of coffee. All more intricate actions. Holding something like a hoover, or toilet brush when doing some cleaning was fine as it’s a full hand grip. It’s ramped up literally overnight, so I’ve ordered some cold packs from Amazon, and with the magic of Prime they arrived same day and are chilling in the freezer. Hopefully they will provide relief because painkillers haven’t worked. This is my least favourite thing so far, by far. You don’t appreciate how valuable a fully working, pain free hand is, until it’s not any more. Hopefully they’ll recover quickly.

After a fry up this morning, I managed some tidying. Hoovering and hanging some washing up, although it was knackering as usual and I did it in stages with rests in-between. I’ve literally sat on my backside for the rest of the day since then. I watched a few football games, then some TV and will do similar until bedtime. Again I wanted a nap today but haven’t really had the opportunity to do so with a house full. I’m already yawning a lot at 8pm, but I can lie-in again tomorrow.

I still feel massively run down. Appetite has been ok for most of the day, but so far I haven’t felt hungry since lunch. It might end up being a few weetabix before bed type day again. Tomorrow we have no plans so it’ll be another sofa day for me I’m guessing.

Yesterday I had a shave (with a razor) for the first time in many many years, I’d guess about 6 or 7 years. I always have stubble, always. I decided to shave my face because I just had random thinly spread hairs on my cheeks and neck, probably 20% of what was there before. Now I’ve shaved and have a baby smooth face, I can gauge when it starts to grow back. 24 hours on and not even a hint of any roughness that would suggest any regrowth.

Weirdly I’ve always kept some fluffy “baby” hair on top of my head and at the sides in places, but it’s not appeared to be growing. At some point I mean to get the razor on my head and shave these 2mm long hairs too, so I can also get a sense of when it starts to grow back, which I expect is at least 3 to 4 weeks away yet. I’d have done it today but for my hands hurting. Maybe tomorrow.

All in all not a bad day but I still haven’t shaken this tiredness yet, it still doesn’t look like going anywhere quickly, just marginal improvements each day. Right now I just want this pain in my fingers to go away, and quickly. All I can do is continue to rest and give things the best chance.