By the first couple days of the second week the chemo had started to do its job. She was slowly coming off of the pain medication and she was slowly coming back to me. It is important to note that during this time the hospital never really told me that she wasn't going to make it. They were supremely confident in her treatment at this stage.
The chemo at this stage was only 4 days long. And by the end of day 4 she was pretty much back to her pre-crisis self, at least mentally. Her body was physically damaged from the crisis and she was starting to feel the effects of chemo, but she was awake and could talk to me.
Chemo begins to really kick-in about two or three days after you finish taking it. I remember thinking, well this isn't so bad, she seems fine. Chemo must be nothing. Oh my young one... You don't know.
By day 6 of her treatment she was chemo sick. She couldn't eat. She felt terrible. She would dry heave constantly throughout the day. Cyndi hated vomit. She could not handle the sight, smell, or thought of it. I was always the one who took care of the puking kids (at least when I was home), but she was trapped in this body that didn't want or couldn't do anything else.
She was sick for about 10-14 days. The hospital kept trying to get her to eat, and she would try but her body just wasn't up for it. So they would try to supplement her diet with Ensure. They would pimp that Ensure so hard, and she hated it. One day the dietician put an Ensure on her tray and Cyndi grabbed that drink and threw it across the room. She looked at me as if to say "I told them, I don't want it!". All I could do was nod my head and laugh... She did tell 'em.
Her hair started to fall out in clumps, one night after I had gone home she asked the nurse to shave her head. I arrived the next morning with a pair of clippers to fix the hack job they did. Losing her hair hurt her. She had such beautiful hair. She was down in the dumps for weeks after losing her hair. The difficulty of all this had set in and to make matters worse the hospital psychologist was trying to cheer her up or manage her mental health. Cyndi hated the sight of that lady and she hated talking to her. I would beg the hospital not to talk to her without talking to me first, so I could prepare her for conversations about diet or mental health, but they didn't listen. Sometimes they got a pissed off patient. Chemo has a way of bringing out a side of you that you would rather not display.
All together including her first hospital, Cyndi was inpatient for 37 days the first time. As we took her home, she still could not walk, she could barely eat, and couldn't take care of herself, but she was home. I remember as we tried to walk into the house she fell going up the stairs. She was still so weak. It was awful, I didn't know what to do. We managed to get her to the couch and there she stayed for two weeks. She couldn't go upstairs to get to bed, she barely had the strength to make it to the bathroom. I slept on the couch next to her for two weeks. But after two weeks our backs were just killing us, so I ran to the furniture store and I bought a cheap mattress and frame and I made her a bed in our living room. She slept there for another two weeks.
We had worked out a system for everything. She could walk with a walker but she could not stand from a sitting position, so we had a routine for getting her up from lying to sitting and sitting to standing. We got pretty good at it over that first month. Like I have said throughout this whole ordeal and our whole 20 years, we can do anything together. We drove 35 miles each way to see her Oncologist every other day. It was a 3 hour trip, unless she needed blood or platelets in which it was a 5 hour trip. I missed a lot of work. I have a subscription to satellite radio and we would listen to 90's grunge on the drive there and home. She would often just sit there quiet, like a warrior getting ready for battle. You should all be so fortunate as to get to spend time with someone so amazing.
It is now August 2021. She has gotten well enough to walk on her own with out a walker, although only for short trips. It took physical therapy to get her there. However, now we were planning the next phase of her care. Her Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT). Cyndi had several matches, so all we really needed to do was to get her back into the hospital for another round of chemo and then the BMT. She checked back in on Sept 7th, the day before my 45th birthday. She would undergo a week of chemo and the BMT by Sept 14th. Her 42nd birthday was Sept 16th.
She would be in the hospital for 32 days this round. The chemo was worse, the after effects were worse. But this time we knew what to expect. We knew to watch her lab values to see when they rebound. We knew what foods she could sort of stomach. We knew what would help her mental health, which by this point was frayed to its end.
On October 8th, she walked out of the hospital. Walking being different than the last time. She rang the bell signaling the end of chemo. We were so optimistic. We were once again planning for our future. They told us the next 100 days would be rough, and the next year will be challenging, but we all believed she was cured. Her leukemia was gone and her life to begin to resume.
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