I didn't take my chemo this morning.  I'm beginning a 3- or 4-day break from taking the Votrient.  The last couple of weeks haven't been great (and having a cold and cough didn't help matters).  The diarrhea has been a constant, countered as much as possible by Imodium.  My appetite has also waned: I look at food, and my desire to eat evaporates.  I'll eat a couple of bites, and then I can't go on.  My jaws just don't want to chew.  This feeling is especially true in the evenings, when I've also been having cramps.  All of that is debilitating; my energy level has been extremely low.  And the fatigue seems to have grown--two long naps during the day and sleeping till 7 or so in the mornings.  No more waking up at 5:30 or 6 to write the blog. 

What finally precipitated my decision to suspend the chemo was that Saturday night we went out for dinner at Topeka's best restaurant (the Rowhouse) with our friends Danny and Tami.  In the late 70s and 80s, Topeka had a wonderful, authentic French restaurant, La Picardie.  The Rowhouse is the best we've had since then.  Open only four nights a week, it changes the menu every week.  Usually, we get the tasting menu--small servings of everything on the menu.  Fortified with Immodium and knowing that there would be no fried food and reasonably sized servings, I was, as always, looking forward to the dinner.  We stayed for nearly three hours, and the company was funny and lively.  And, at least for the others, the food was superb.  But I took one mouthful of the amuse-bouche and could barely swallow it.  The salad was delicious; I ate half of it. That was followed by a small bowl of succotash soup; most of that went to Mohamed.  The main course included polenta, which I moved around my plate, two small salmon cakes, which I simply couldn't eat at all, and very tender beef, of which I could eat only a little.  I'll have to admit that I did better with the three samples of dessert.  Although I made it through the evening without rushing to the bathroom, I was up several times during the night, and Sunday morning, after taking my dozen pills with orange juice, I had a bout of vomiting. 

So enough is enough.  I think my body needs some time to recuperate and, I hope, return to its previous plateau.  I'm tired of being tired.  I'd like to be a fun person again--to have some energy and a sense of humor.  Other than the Rowhouse, we didn't go out for lunch or dinner at all last week, and most of the time I let Mohamed run errands and go shopping solo.  I don't know how many times I ate sushi last week, but the fresh combo platters at the grocery store sushi bar are virtually the only meal that looks appetizing.  I'll take these days off and hope that not swallowing toxic chemicals every morning will provide some relief.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend and colleague Maureen (Mo) mentioned that she was participating in a writing group that was focusing on memoirs.  That week's topic of discussion was self-censorship: those things that memoir writers consciously choose to leave out.  I was going to write about my own self-censorship this morning, but I'll put it off till next time.  Still, I don't like writing entries like today's.  If this is truly a blog about living with cancer, I know I need to be honest about the times that are discouraging and the side effects that aren't so pretty. But I don't like to think of myself as a complainer, and it's hard for me to think that that's how I'm coming across.  What do I censor?  Well, I've been thinking about serials and cliffhangers lately, so tune in Thursday--same time, same place--for my confessions.