Cancer & chemo rant
Hi, I posted on this subreddit regarding starting chemotherapy, and now that I’m on it, I don’t know if I can last 6 months of treatment.
I’m 19M and was diagnosed a month ago with stage 3 (3C)colon cancer with 10 positive lymph nodes out of 33. I already had surgery to remove a part of the right colon which I’ve recovered from and am now doing chemotherapy (CAPOX). I had my first infusion 2 weeks ago, and man did it suck after a few days. felt nauseous, though the pre med they gave before the infusion helped alot. It left me fatigued, no matter how much sleep I got, I was tired. Though after a week, most of these issues were gone.
However, the only problem im having is swallowing the oral chemo pills. Just last week I was having no troubles taking swallowing pills, but as of today and yesterday , I’m struggling and having major troubles taking the capecitabine. I take 5 pills ( 3 150mg & 2 500mg). It started yesterday morning after eating my breakfast, I went to go take the pills with water like the usual way I do it all the time, but this time the pills just stayed in my mouth while I was swallowing all the water. After attempting a little more, I was finally able to swallow all my pills. Fast forward to the evening dose, I had more troubles swallowing it. I even missed one pill because I was gagging on it while trying to swallow and spat it out into the trash can. Fast forward to this morning, I tried taking it down with water first, but this time none of the pills I could swallow, eventually the smaller pills went down, but not the bigger pills. I tried taking it with yogurt but I just end up eating the yogurt and leaving the pill in my mouth. Eventually, after a while of trying to swallow it, I somehow ended up being able to swallow one big pill but spat out the other. I’m doing everything in my power to take these pills, but my body is just rejecting it and it’s annoying and irritating, and pissing me off badly.
If I’m being so honest, this whole chemo process makes me not want to deal with it for the next 6 months of my life. These pills make me not want to deal with the 6 month process of chemo. The thought of being diagnosed with cancer at 19 is miserable and the treatment phase is not making it any better. It literally flipped my life completely and now I’m just so lost in life. I just completed my freshman year of college and am about to do my 2nd year, which i don’t even know if I can handle while being treatment.
I have all the support I can ask for from my family and a few friends, but I still just feel so down and sad. To be honest, I don’t have much friends either that I can openly talk about my cancer to and im just stuck at home playing video games alone the whole day to cope with my diagnosis. It’s worth a while though since playing video games is my only way of making myself feel a little happier.
That being said, thank you to everyone who reads this, and if you have any advice for me, I’d appreciate it so much ❤️