Feeling Fragile

I'm tempted to start with another apology for it being so long since my last post, but I have a feeling that's getting old...so I won't bother.

Wow, it's been a tough month!  The last two rounds of chemotherapy  have really hit me hard, and made me quite sick...so, going into this last round (#9), I wasn't really looking forward to it (am I ever, really?).  To make matters worse, I picked up a stomach virus two days before starting chemo, so I entered the chemo treatment barely recovered from a nasty bug...what I'm saying is that I wimped out.  I only completed four of the five rounds of chemotherapy.  It's the first time, in 21 rounds of chemotherapy over two years, that I've ever failed to complete a round.  I had been physically sick off and on for two months, and seriously ill for four or five days before and during chemo...and well, I just...ran out.  Ran out of everything.  Stamina, the will and desire to fight it, physical strength...but it was mostly mental.  I looked at my last dose of chemotherapy on Thursday night, having been sick for days, knowing the last dose would make me even more sick, and just couldn't do it.  I tried a new anti-nausea med (phenergan), and it knocked me out like nothing has ever done...literally, I took one about 9:30am when I was feeling sick, and woke up eleven hours later.  Somehow, Pooh tells me we went to the mall and had a burger, but I don't remember much of it.  Crazy...but I didn't get sick, so I suppose it did it's job.   

I'm always amazed by how many people tell me how "strong" they think I am.  But in this blog -- more venting than anything else -- I sure don't feel it.  On the contrary, I feel extremely fragile.  More fragile than I think I've ever felt in this whole process.  I feel weak, sick, tired, and run down.  There are interesting ironies here, by the way -- isn't it ironic that a runner "ran out" of strength and feels "run down"?  That might be worth a blog sometime...how our language has developed metaphors for fatigue focused on running...hmmm...

But I digress.  As I'm learning to expect, the blogger community stepped up BIG...during three weeks of blog silence, I got messages on voicemail, e-mail, Facebook, even comments through this blog, all checking in to make sure I was doing okay.  To answer everyone who so kindly thought of me -- I'm okay.  But that's about it.  Seattle Marathon training is going well, and believe it or not I've only missed two cross-training days (and no runs) in the last two months of off-and-on illness.  10-mile run planned for this weekend, and I feel up to it.  Pooh, Monkey, and running remain my solace.  Today, for the first time in a long time, I feel good -- healthy.  Tempo run tomorrow, which is my favorite...and thanks to many of you, I'm ready.  Next blog will be more positive, I promise!