Hello to my old FrEnemy
I spent the last four days wrestling with the flu (or something very much like it). You may know that means I also played host to a truck load of interferon. Its interferon that gives you the fatigued muscles, the knocked down appetite, and listless feelings.
It also may have saved my life.
You see decades ago (1970’s) doctors and scientists thought it might be a cure for cancer. They theorized they could hyper charge the human immune system by flooding it with this protein and then maybe the body would be switched on to attacking cancer. For me personally, it seems to have certainly helped. I am sitting on 7+ years of no recurring disease, but I’m also sort of an outlier.
Here is a scholarly take on it. http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/cancers-in-general/treatment/cancer-drugs/interferon
BTW, when you look at the list of side effects, I experienced most of these at some point during treatment — it was a real party ;-)
Because of essentially having lived with these side effects, I am now very aware of when I am getting ‘regularly’ sick. On the plus side, when you’ve spent a year feeling like you have the flu just about every day, you get pretty good at adapting your life to it. But you also feel stuck in neutral.
This past weekend was a reminder of what a difference there is between surviving and thriving. I had several moments of deja vu that frankly sucked. The fever and aches are bad enough but the depression and detachment are the real demons I had to face.
Hearing the joyous sounds of your kids playing with dogs should make you want to get out of bed and just be a part of that circus but my body and mind were not having any of it. I have so much respect and empathy for people struggling with clinical depression after a year with my frenemy.
Like I said, interferon regrettably only sort of works and not all the time and not for everybody.
That is why organizations like Pelotonia are so important and why I am riding again this year! We need new drugs and approaches to cancer treatment as much as ever.
So please like this, share it, retweet it and do whatever else you can with social media and word of mouth. Tell the world (and Cancer) that MidnightTrainFromGeorgia is rolling out again for Pelotonia 2017 and we won’t be stopping until we met #onegoal #endcancer. www.pelotonia.org/carabello1014
