Despair not a choice but Neulasta is hell

A perky woman from the hospital told me on Friday that I might feel better by Sunday. I had the first deluge of drugs aimed at simultaneously killing me and saving me on Monday.

I went into this week expecting the best but preparing for the worst  - so I thought. Nothing could have prepared me for this week. If you’ve never really been sick; thank God. If you’ve ever really been sick, you know the way despair will hang around like a vulture when it takes all you have to turn over or get up.

I went into the hospital on Tuesday and for about five hours drugs, ranging from anti-nausea to steroids to a chemo cocktail, were dripped or flushed into an intravenous port feeding into a main artery. I did okay in spite of not having any sleep the night before due to the oral steroid.

I got home that afternoon and, as directed, took more steroids and anti-nausea drugs. Within an hour, the same piercing headache I’d felt that morning came back. I went to bed around 7:00 PM for another long, sleepless night.

Wednesday I got up feeling lousy but I was able to push through, taking Maggie to school and making my way to the hospital for my first shot of Neulasta (see description below). It’s basically a drug derived from e. coli that boosts white blood cells so a person won’t die from infection while receiving large doses of chemo. 

My next stop was the AT&T store to replace a modem blown out by lightening the day before. Another first for me this week was witnessing a basketball sized bundle of fire outside my window accompanied by a very loud crack. I’ve yet to draw a meaningful connection between that oddity and the hell I would enter Wednesday night.

I did manage to sleep Wednesday night in two hour blocks broken by pain, complete from my head to toes leaving me unable to do anything but literally pray one simple sentence: Dear God, please help me.

Thursday is a blur. I just knew Friday would be better. It was worse. Finally, by late evening I was sitting up for longer spells, but the crushing headache did not relent until about 10:00 AM Saturday morning. The nausea and fatigue are parked for the day again, it seems.

Yes, I’ve taken Tylenol at intervals probably not completely safe, but it does give a reprieve for a couple hours allowing sleep. I turned down more narcotics because I know what those do to me.

Can I handle being incapacitated like this every month? I don’t even yet know how many days before I can actually do something. Is there a greater cure coming out of this  literal poisoning? 

Since this all began in June I’ve pressed past a sense of going backwards, a fear of never getting to another level, remaining stuck right here. This week I’ve had nothing to press with. It’s our most hateful demon’s delight to have us so close to the breaking point, so devoid of any signs that better days might be ahead that we fall into despair. 

Despair is what existential philosopher Soren Kierkegarrd called the true “sickness unto death.” He said that we fall into despair when we fail to align with God’s plan for our lives.

And what is the plan we ask, especially amid blinding pain whether emotional, physical or spiritual? I think the plan is abandonment to his care each step. It’s trust. It’s refusal to give up no matter what. It’s the same plan we embraced right after that terrible day in September ten years ago now. 

It made no sense. All seemed changed for the worse for ever. Maybe it has, but at the heart of American spirit, and yes excellence, is that ridiculous perseverance. 

But again why, we ask? Why are we any different? The answer is simple. We are free to choose. I can choose despair or hope. God nor anyone else forces either on me. But my choice will determine the outcome entirely.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1

Neulasta® (pegfilgrastim) is a covalent conjugate of recombinant methionyl human G-CSF (Filgrastim) and monomethoxypolyethylene glycol. Filgrastim is a water-soluble 175 amino acid protein with a molecular weight of approximately 19 kilodaltons (kD). Filgrastim is obtained from the bacterial fermentation of a strain of Escherichia coli transformed with a genetically engineered plasmid containing the human G-CSF gene. To produce pegfilgrastim, a 20 kD monomethoxypolyethylene glycol molecule is covalently bound to the N-terminal methionyl residue of Filgrastim. The average molecular weight of pegfilgrastim is approximately 39 kD.