bones

I will be taking my chemo treatments eight times, once every other week. On the day following each treatment, I have to return to the oncologist's office to get a shot of Neulasta - a medication derived from human growth factor that stimulates my bone marrow to start producing that we may quickly replenish my chemo-dwindled blood cell counts.
It aches, this cell-production stimulator. The gears within these bones are used to functioning at a slow steady pace. They find the idea of kicking into high speed work a depressingly laborious affair, and so they move begrudgingly into the drudgery that is saving my immune system. I feel like I've just pulled them out of retirement. I am grateful for this medical magic; it guarantees to make chemo more tolerable and less dangerous than the treatments given in the past. That said, my hips and my thighs, knees and arms, ache in a deep-down, unreachable way, not intense, but persistent and unmovable. Worsening the situation is the reality that yesterday I was knocked flat on my ass with fatigue and a constant, if minor, nausea. Thursday night I came home from work exhausted, managed to stay awake until about 8:30 when I was out cold until nearly 10:00 Friday morning, barring one interruption in sleep to take anti-nausea medicine. By the time Jason got home at 6:30, I estimate that I'd managed to stay awake for all of four hours. All those hours passed in bed surely didn't help my aching bones.
I have long experienced bone and muscle pain (thanks scoliosis!), that work together creating sharp pain sensations that can often be massaged and stretched to relief. This is a different feeling altogether, mostly in that it feels, appropriately, like it is so far inside of me. Moreover, it isn't connected to a muscle pain so while my temptation is rub my legs and anticipate relief, it doesn't solve my problem.
On brighter notes, I hardly feel sick to my stomach at all, and while food sounds pretty unappetizing, I did eat a dish of fruit and some toast. I think this may be the only thing I want to eat for the next month. I think I'm even up for tentative movie-going plans I made yesterday.

Hairs countdown: 11 days. The logic behind the countdown - Over 90% of patients lose about 90% of their hair between days 14-17 of treatment using the medications I am taking. The idea of waiting for that to happen, showering and coming away with clumps of hair circling the drain or stuck to my towel, waking with tufts stuck all over my pillow, it just sounds so depressing, so passive. So I'm just going to avoid all of that sad, slow hair loss by just doing it my own damn self... at the last possible minute.