It's a Chipper

Recently Greg Glassman, the founder and head honcho of Crossfit was interviewed by 60 Minutes. In this interview Greg states the following:  

“Crossfit prepares athletes for the uknown and the unforeseen. Getting ready for war, for an earthquake, getting ready for mugging, getting ready for the horrible knews that you have leukemia. What awaits us all is challenge, that’s for sure.” And damn was he right.

The first week of my chemo cycle went better than expected. Infusion day wasn’t painful and besides peeing red (from the drugs) and actually feeling the drugs go through my body ( a little weird) it was fine. 

Beautiful Valley View Hospital

From Wednesday until Monday morning I experienced mostly “okay days”. I was pleasantly surprised that in the mornings and most of the day I was able to function fairly well. I was even able to eat….mostly mac and cheese those first few days. :) The nausea would usually hit in the later afternoon and stay most of the evening until bed. I would take my anti-nausea pills (compazine first and if needed adavane) and it would definitely keep me from throwing up. I still felt yucky but it was definitely better than having the flu!

As Tom Petty says, “Waiting is the hardest part.” That was the worst part of that first week. They made it clear that it’s best to stay on top of your nausea. So all day every day I was constantly analyzing my body. And even though I wasn’t nauseous in the mornings or during the day, I still felt off. So that was the most exhausting part, trying to differentiate when I had actual nausea that required pills versus just feeling funky. Thankfully there were a few of the days that it was very clear it was time for the meds. I would all of a sudden get a wave of nausea and felt like any second I would puke. I carried my pills around with me so I could pop them at anytime and pray they kicked in before I started throwing up, and they always did!

On Wednesday night (5/13) I did have a panic moment though. They had told me that most of the time people don’t have much reactions to the chemo on day one. Well a few hours after chemo is when my first nausea hit. It wasn’t that bad, but it freaked me out because I couldn’t help but think what the actual bad days would be like if on my good day I was already feeling this way. For most of this journey I haven’t been too freaked out or worried. I just figured there is no point crying over spilt milk. Why freak out when we have no idea how my body will react to everything. That night was the first time I was really worried about what was in store for me in the future. It was the first time I really lost hope and despair. That’s when I decided I needed to treat this experience like a chipper (For noncrossfitters, when you google a chipper it says: A brutal combination of movements at high volume that will seriously test your toughness. Although this is very true, to give you a better idea of what a chipper is: A workout with many reps and many movements (you chip away at it), typically completed in one single round for time.).

When working on a chipper there comes a time when you have that panic moment. You feel so horrible at one movement and all you can think about is all the movements you still have to do. When this happens I try my hardest to banish those thoughts and focus on two things, not how far I have to go, but how far I have already come. Or I focus on my form and technique during each movement. So during treatment I will apply these same principles

And sure enough, the bad days weren’t any worse than that first night. And hell, I even went into the gym on Saturday and Sunday afternoon. They may have been low key workouts, but I was in the gym on my bad day! And I even did some very light hiking with the family. There was hope again. :)

Recovery Week:

On Monday, May 18th I talked with my doctors and they said that in the next day or two the symptoms should hopefully ease up and I will get some days to recover. That was a pleasant surprise! I thought the  days might get better but still be pretty icky. On Tuesday morning I woke up and was out of the chemo fog. It was amazing. You don’t even realize you are in this fog. You know when you are nauseous or having the other symptons like mouth dryness/weirdness, skin and hair being affected, etc. But it wasn’t until Tuesday that I realized I was walking around in a sort of haze. So it felt amazing to come out of that chemo fog!

Tuesday was a funny day though. I was so excited to finally feel good, be out of this chemo fog, and my ovaries were finally normal, which means I could work out!! Yay! So off to the gym I went. I wasn’t feeling quite ready to go to class so I went to open gym and did my own thing. And wow, what a slap to my face. So, I may feel like I am still this super in shape crossfitter, but geez, taking 4-5 weeks off and having chemo still in your system, I am not the same person physically. And I knew that there would be changes and I should just be happy to work out at all, but it was really hard. Crossfit has and is our obsession. Our life, our friends, our community, everything revolves around Crossfit. And the Crossfit regionals are going on right now so all we are doing is watching crossfit and talking about crossfit (not that it's much different other times ;)). And all of a sudden doing crossfit really really sucks.

On Wednesday I woke up still in this really weird mental funk. I kept trying to tell myself to stop being all negative, the bad days went way better than expected and even though my workout on Tuesday was not fun and was quite painful, I was still working out. But no matter what I told myself I couldn’t get out of this negative feeling. I was taking Lubby for a walk, staring at Mt. Sopris, a mountain that usually every time I see it just makes me feel good inside and it did nothing for me. Uh oh.  

  

Then a light bulb went off. It’s the Zoladex (menopause drug) and it’s totally messing with me! They had told me it causes moodiness but I assumed that meant I would just be bitchy to people. It was then that I realized this moodiness was causing me to have this depressed feeling. The remainder of the walk I couldn’t help but feel so sorry for people that deal with depression on a regular basis. That shit sucks. Thankfully having the realization about it helped me a feel a little better, and that night I went to yoga at Sopris Crossfit  with a bunch of my friends and that completely kicked depression in the face and I was back to my positive, happy-go-lucky self. On top of that, yoga went a thousand times better than my intense crossfit workout yesterday. It felt so good!

Thursday-Sunday have been really good too! I got back in the gym on Thursday and just decided I would work on strength, gymnastics, and other things and I wouldn’t do very many metcons or intense workouts. Then Saturday morning I couldn’t help but go to our 7 AM competitors WOD. I had a whole escape plan figured out if the workout (which was a team workout) didn’t go well. But I never had to use it! As a team we did two of the regionals workouts and I felt and did great! Definitely not as good as I would have done 45 days ago. But I ran, I did a ton of snatches, rope climbs and wall balls! It felt so good to be back in love with doing crossfit again. And now I know, perhaps on my first day out of the chemo fog I shouldn’t push it so hard.

All in all- recovery week is obviously way better  than week one after chemo infusions. But so far week one hasn’t been horrible and I hope that it continues to be this way. Mentally I have told myself that regardless of how they go, I really only have 15-18 more “bad days”! I can do that! Just chip away, one day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time if I must.