Adrenal Courage

One of my chemo meds I took was called the “red devil.” By the end of my four days of infusions, I felt drained, nauseous and had terrible vertigo. I had a reaction to one of the medications so the nurses gave me IV benadryl prior to infusions. If you’ve had normal benadryl before and it makes you sleepy, imagine something 10 times stronger. It knocked me right out but gave me terrible restless legs. I went back to work the week after. I felt I had a duty to my employer and my patients and wanted to keep things as normal as possible for the girls. If I could do it over – I would not have worked during chemo. I would nap an hour a day at work, but getting through the day felt like absolute torture. I was not my best self with all the brain fog and fatigue I was experiencing. It was also incredibly hard to go home and take care of the girls when I felt so sick. The girls had a ton of TV time and dates with dad during those days.  

A few weeks later, before my next chemo cycle, my hair started to fall out in clumps. I had always thought this process would take several months and fall out slowly. Boy was I wrong. The hair was everywhere. It started to gross me out significantly so I chopped it. This hair cut was definitely the most emotional one I had ever had. My sweet friend, Lisa, agreed to open her salon for me. She took her time, was incredibly kind and gave me a hug at the end. This is just one example of the many people who have been so kind and helpful throughout my journey and I am so thankful. Despite me telling myself that I didn’t care about my hair, that it would grow back, that one hit me hard. I am very type A, some may say control freak. I felt like I had zero control of my body or what was happening to me. When I got home, my girls were pretty shocked. They kept telling me I looked like a boy, which was a good lesson to teach that girls can have short hair too. It wasn’t long after that my hair became so patchy that I asked Nick to shave it. This was also pretty emotional and intimate. I started to wear head covers. I thought my patients, seeing how I see kids oftentimes without their parents, would be asking questions about it. To my surprise, no one really said anything except for 2 patients who I knew would ask. No one made me feel weird or different. It’s amazing how sometimes little things that cause us so much worry tend to not be a big deal at all.  

As I neared closer to my next infusion, my appetite and early satiety seemed to be much improved. This gave me some motivation to keep going as I felt like changes were happening.  

To add some more stress to the whole situation, Nick was in the process of building his new H2 Move physical therapy clinic during this whole ordeal. There were several issues and setbacks during the process. Then the ice storm happened. For those who are not local, the ice storm was several days of freezing rain which caused devastating damage to many of the surrounding counties. Luckily, we were only without power for about 2.5 days, as some went without for weeks. Nick made us all sleep in the living room together because he was afraid trees would fall on our house while we were sleeping. The ice storm damaged the new transformer at the building which ended up pushing the opening back. Thankfully, Nick was still able to see patients in the existing space while he waited for this to be fixed. After the clinic officially opened, we were in a hurry to contact all the insurance companies to change addresses for payments.  

My sister came the Sunday before my next cycle to help. She helped with dinner, with the girls and carted all us Hamlin girls to/from school/daycare/infusion center. I remember the morning of my first infusion that round going to leave and telling my sister I didn’t want to go. I fasted prior to my infusions the second cycle and I think it helped my nausea tremendously. I also asked not to be given benadryl as the sedating effects and restless legs were incredibly unpleasant. I had started taking zyrtec instead and this seemed to do the trick.