MDS: Under the Curtain of Fatigue

Everything looms larger when you're tired, my old mum used to say.

She got that right.

Here we are, five Vidaza shots into the current seven-shot cycle, and it feels like I'm carrying a 10-ton weight around on my back, complemented by tiny, but densely heavy, weights attached to my eyelids.

Talk about tired.

When you can sit at your desk working only for an hour or so, and then your head hits the desktop like its being pulled there by a mega-magnet, that's tired.

When it's all the energy you can muster to thumb the TV remote's buttons, but you don't have the patience to sit (lie?) through anything that appears on the screen, that's tired.

When climbing the stairs to go to bed seems like an Everest ascent, that's tired.

Dr. O says that her other MDS/Vidaza patient (and I think there's only one) reports serious fatigue setting in after the third shot. I'll second that.

It's a good thing I played golf on Tuesday, after Shot Two, and before this curtain of fatigue settled over me.

Perhaps the exhaustion is intensified by its contrast to last week's energy, which was high for me, even relative to the pre-MDS days. It strikes me that it's like driving a car with a very sticky gas pedal: push down hard and you jerk immediately high-speed; let up, and you stall out.

I was revving up pretty good, last week. This week I'm sputtering at best. Can someone call the AAA for bedside assistance?