By chance, cleaning through my unread emails, I stumbled across notes and pictures for a post I had planned for nearly a year ago and for some reason never published. It struck me that it could very nearly have been something I wrote just this week. There wasn’t much written, just two rough paragraphs, but it did come with a nice collection of pictures. Here is what would have been, from November 4th, 2017:
Side Effects Have Me Scratching My Head
There’s no doubt that dealing with the side effects of cancer treatment can be perplexing. Patients deal with everything from digestive issues to pain to total hair loss to fatigue to stiff joints.
Over the last 3 years, I’ve had my share of issues and adaptations. Sometimes, alleviating a side effect proves relatively simple: take a pill, stop taking a pill, wear compression socks, change diet, wear a hat, take another pill, just accept it as a new part of life… But my current side effect of note has me scratching my head. It Itches. Oh, it itches. And nothing seems to be able to make it stop.
That smiling face implies something was soothing my scalp under that plastic wrap.
The major tip off that this was a year ago: hair covering the red scalp!
This “dandruff” would be laughed off my shirt today!
The Rosemary Infusion that I made as a rinse to try soothing my scalp.
That was then, this is now.
Looking back at the posts, notes, and pictures from my experience on afatinib (the first targeted drug in the EGFR TKI category that I had tried), the experience seems so quaint. I know it certainly did not feel that way back then, however.
Notice anything different about the hair? Much edgier in the current pics. I should probably have gone for this look years ago. After having spent a good deal of my morning harvesting a giant leaf of aloe vera and then slathering the juice and gel all over my arms, chest, and scalp, I am kind of excited about revisiting that rosemary infusion. I recall it feeling good when I rinsed my hair with it and I do like the scent. Maybe it will be another viable addition to my arsenal of things that seem to work for a few hours or less (like yesterday’s Aveeno bath, which would have worked longer if the water didn’t start getting cold).
Itching, Itching, Scratching… By chance, cleaning through my unread emails, I stumbled across notes and pictures for a post I had planned for nearly a year ago and for some reason never published.