Treatment?

Enough, already?!

All the pages of warnings and side effects we had to read, before going in, did not prepare me for the actual experience of the first treatment for my amyloidosis. The warnings were dire, everything from nausea and vomiting to bleeding gums and hair loss. But the administrations themselves were not painful, I slept like a baby the first night, and I'm still waiting for the "dire" parts to kick in.

I'm particularly enjoying the steroids. As I understand it, they work to calm down my immune system when it wants to rise up and fight everything new coming into my body by way of the chemotherapy. But it also gave me my voice back, which had become strained and breathy, increased the mobility of my right shoulder, which had been "frozen" by a tendinitis attack, and reminded me in conversation of just how "verbal" I really am, which Jean had noticed, way back when, when we first started to date.

The full story, with the lead-up to this latest development, is available starting next Sunday, November 1st, over on Substack, as a serialized book on my site there, Sick to Death: A Journal of Illness in Real Time. There is no direct way for you to go there from here, but here is a link that might help. Enter this into your browser: https://substack.com/@brianpearson2 Then click on any of my posts and provide your email where it invites you to subscribe. That will deliver each week's installment directly to your email inbox. It gives you an option for payment, but I am offering this service for free.

There are definitely moments of this journey that make me wonder if I really want to be sharing the story at all. Had the dire predictions for my treatment come to fruition, and I was feeling sick and exhausted, does the world really need to know that, and would I be able to get enough perspective on it in the first place, to write about it?

But what I am learning is that there are no straight lines on this journey. It is curiosity that keeps encouraging me to peek around the next corner, and then the next. The story in this way is telling itself. I am as much a voyeur as a voyager. And this makes me so glad to have your company, wherever it all leads. Thank you for your ongoing interest and support.