Always a New Side Effect

With each cycle, it seems like a new side effect pops up. Last cycle, I noticed that my fingers had gotten darker. Not to worry, I was told by my oncologist; pigmentation changes are in fact perfectly normal during chemo. This time, it's been a lingering taste on my tongue that has a metallic character. This is something I was told about during my first cycle, and while I'd noticed a bit of change in my taste during the first two cycles, it's been by far the most pronounced this cycle. It gets in the way of my fully tasting food, and annoyingly stays on my mouth when I'm not eating. Thankfully, I've found that chewing gum counters this.

Oh well, this is really not a big deal in the grand scheme of things; just thought it was some interesting news to report. My energy level is getting close to normal now, though my white blood cell counts are not surprisingly down and will have to recover. If the past two cycles are any indication, this should happen by the end of the week. The bigger events as far as treatment goes will happen in one week's time; I'll have my scans to see how well the chemo is doing, and I'll also get my actual temporary prosthesis. It's still temporary in that the remainder of my left lower leg will shrink even more as time progresses (I'll get a permanent prosthesis once the shrinking is complete), but it's much more permanent than the test socket I'm currently using, which feels a bit heavy to me, though maybe all prosthetic legs are going to feel a bit heavy given that they're not natural legs. Even the test socket is actually lighter than the part of my leg that it replaced; it was weighed at 2.5 kg, while I lost a little over 3 kg from the amputation (there's another feature about Sloan-Kettering: they use metric units instead of English ones). Well, I guess I'll find out if the temporary prosthesis is lighter in a week's time. Hopefully, I'll be more adept at walking when I get it. The leg swelling from the fluid infusion (I'd in fact gained between 5 and 6 kg of water weight from it!) during chemo cut out a lot of valuable practice time, but I've still made progress. I mostly use two crutches still when I walk with it, but I've gotten a lot better at walking with just one. The next big task for me is to be able to put my weight on only the prosthetic leg. I've been doing exercises where I gradually increase the amount of weight I put on it to achieve this goal. Hopefully, it's not too much longer before this happens. I'll be sure to post about it when it does :)