Steroid psychosis

     What a week. I had chemo on Friday morning, then gave a reading Friday evening. The reading went exceptionally well -- I felt calm, comfortable, and the story was well-received by the 75 or so people in the audience. Very energizing. Then I came home and slept, hard. M's parents came by yesterday and, unlike the immediate aftermath of most Topo Gigio treatments, I was perky enough to hang out with them for a couple of hours. That's major progress.

     You'd think the fact that I'm getting a slightly lower dose of chemo than before (which actually adds up to a higher amount over three weeks) is what made the difference, but you'd be wrong! We also ditched the Decadron, a steroid that helps quell nausea and, incidentally, didn't anyone tell you this?, just a little tip, can bring on the batshit crazies in some huge percentage of patients. When I told Dr. J a couple of weeks ago that for three days after chemo, the world seemed about to end, he immediately suggested we drop the Decadron. But it was the infusion nurse who snapped it into perspective for me and M on Friday: "Steroid psychosis! We see it all the time with Decadron. Google it when you get home." 

     So. While I'm thrilled to know that the source of my... how you say... emotional delicacy was a pre-med, and apparently a non-essential one at that (no horking at all without it, phew!), I find myself in a familiar state of dismay over having lost all that time to crying; over freaking out my family; over assuming, as I often do, that nothing can be done and I must take my lumps. A long-term cumulative effect of sliding health, trauma and chemo -- and I've had "a helluva lot," as Dr. J never fails to remind me -- is fuzzy memory. So I don't recall being out of my mind with Decadron when I was on Gemzar or cisplatin (or whatever it was) last year. M does remember it; when he googled "steroid psychosis" this morning, he said it all looks very familiar, and I am not alone.

     One of my favorite shows on the teevee is "House," as I've mentioned before. Part of what I love about it, aside from the consistently complex characters, is that the medical cases always present the physician's paradox: how to save the patient without killing the patient? I guess the fish an oncologist is frying really are that big; the smaller ones (what's a little psychosis in the grand scheme of things?) don't seem worth mentioning.

     The week overall: a net gain.