brog rog log snog dog frog hog pog remember alf? he's back. in pog form.

This is going to be a little heavier than most of what I put up here.  I don't talk about this very often because I'm usually doing quite well, and because most people can't relate. But.

I’ve been… Off, lately. It’s got mostly, if not everything, to do with that other side of my day, the one where I’m neither a student nor a writer, but rather a cancer patient. On that side of things, my treatments have been hitting me harder, I’ve been sleeping incredibly poorly, I’m all screwed up dietarily and frankly I’m pretty damn tired of the whole process. I’ve got roughly a year left on most of my treatments before I’m essentially free and clear, based on our current estimates, and I don’t think knowing that is helping me at all. Rather, it’s a tantalizing fruit, hanging just out of reach. It is a watched pot. It is toast in the toaster, while I stand there waiting to spread my topping of delicious choice.

This is compounded by a couple of breaks in my treatments in the last few months, to make room for finals, to deal with side effects, that sort of thing. I got a taste of what it was like to actually be me again, and I liked it. I liked it a lot. Going back on my interferon, resuming my phototherapy? Sucked very much bad.

I’m going to let you all in on a little bit of my life.

This is what I bang into my subcutaneous fatty tissue three times a week:

It’s called Intron A. More properly, it is interferon alpha 2b, prescribed as an immune system remediant. What that means, essentially, is that through repeated injection, it will force my body to hit the reset button on my immune system. Why is this important? Because that’s what’s wrong with me. I have a non-Hodgkins lymphoma called Mycosis Fungoides. The technical version is that the CD4+ recruiter t-cells specific to my dermis have an indeterminate tissue residency time; this means that when an immune response is prompted in my skin, it never fucking stops. This is why I have had significant trouble with my skin for the last decade, and quite possibly why I’ve had skin trouble my whole life. When I say trouble, I mean big red patches that tended to flake skin and itch like it was my job to scratch. Yes. Sexy.

These days, I am doing rather well from a dermatological standpoint. Or rather, the net damage from my phototherapy treatments is much less pressing than the damage from my cancer. I moisturize a lot. Much of this recent progress is due to the interferon injections, of a certainty.

So why am I so put out by this medication? Aside from the obvious fact that I have to inject myself with it? Which isn’t that bad because, in spite of the panic attack I almost had when doing it the first time, it’s just a little dial-a-dose pen like you get for insulin these days; just a little prick, really. No. The reason I’m talking about interferon is because of the list of side effects. There are three kinds:

Reported by most (7/10)

Reported by some (7/100)

Rare but troubling (7/1000)

I'd list the side effects individually, but that would add another page to this thing.  

The most prominent and persistently troubling side effects are temporary depression and massive irritability. I have days on this stuff where I would just as soon glass you in the temple as say hello, because you are In. My. Way. And that’s not like me. I’m not violent, I’m not angry. In fact, I’m tolerant to the point of detriment to my own well being.

But then there are the sleep requirements. Even though I am on what has been described to me as a very low dose, it still requires ten to twelve hours of sleep to deal with the primary effects: Full body muscle aches, persistent sinus headaches, and general crap-assing malaise. I basically feel like I have influenza three times a week, minus the fever and chills. Though, there were fever and chills for the first two weeks, while my body was getting used to the stuff. That’s because your body naturally produces interferon of its own in response to viral infections, and interferon is the stuff that is largely responsible for the symptoms you feel when you have the flu. It makes me pee a lot, too.

On interferon days, I am tired, irritable, depressed and generally disinterested to varying degrees. I don’t want to do anything, and moreover, I don’t care that I don’t want to do anything. That’s three days a week where the only saving grace is knowing exactly why I feel the way I do; having something to blame eases the burden.

I have One More Year left on this stuff. The treatment arc is almost always two years long.

One more year.  What's one more year, really?