Hydration is the most important thing (and so is your diet)#

Getting enough fluids is probably the main thing you’ll read about everywhere. In oncology communities, it’s often said that you have to pee out the cancer, and it’s true. Drinking enough makes it easier for your body to get rid of the “medicinal” chemicals and, in better cases, some of the dead cancer tissue that’s gradually being flushed out. I always had a problem with staying hydrated, but a few days before and especially after chemo, I really tried to drink at least one and a half to two liters of water a day. It helps with everything: headaches, fatigue, digestion, mouth sores, and even nausea (especially if you’re well-hydrated before the infusion). It also makes life much easier for your kidneys and liver, which are busy filtering out the toxic parts of the medicine, and you can reduce the risk of future damage to them.

It’s also crucial for your body to get enough nutrients to help it repair itself as quickly as possible after the chemotherapy tears down the cells. Of course, your diet should be healthy and balanced, as it always should be, but anything counts, especially in the first few days after the infusion when you feel sick and it’s hard to get even the smallest portion down. During this time, I especially recommend light meals that aren’t too greasy, salty, or spicy. And don’t stress if you gain weight. Your main job right now is to survive the treatment; there will be plenty of time to worry about beauty standards once it’s over.

Try to sleep as much as possible#

I understand that this advice can be hard to follow, stress, chemical changes, and body aches can cause sleep problems. Personally, in the last few months of treatment, I would wake up about 3 times a night, and it was very hard to fall back asleep — I usually slept at least two hours less than what I actually spent in bed. Even so, I tried to sleep as much as I could, at least the classic eight hours. The first few days after the infusion, I’m able to spend a good twelve hours in bed. I feel sick all day anyway and have nothing better to do. Sleep is not only a great method of recovery, which a chemo-torn body really needs, but it’s also a wonderful way to fast-forward through time and not have to experience the most unpleasant hours. The more sleep, the better.

Take medication when you need it#

Before my diagnosis, I was always a hero when it came to non-essential medication. I would only take Ibuprofen and Paracetamol when it was truly the worst, and I generally avoided them. I never used nasal spray much either, for fear of getting addicted, and I generally always refused all sorts of medicines that could actually make me feel better. But chemotherapy is something else entirely. For nausea, I had two medications, Metoclopramide Accord and, for worse cases, Ondansetron Bluefish, and it’s really important to take these as soon as you feel the first hints of nausea. The same goes for medications for digestive issues or even muscle and head aches. Catching these things early is crucial, because otherwise your brain will once again develop stronger associations between the treatment and all that pain, and you’ll end up like me, unable to go to the last few infusions without anxiety medication.

Find some passive entertainment#

Some days, it’s just not possible to do any truly active activities, but that doesn’t mean you have to lie in bed or on the couch all day and stare at the ceiling. Try to think of all those TV shows, movies, documentaries, or YouTube videos you’ve wanted to watch for a long time but just didn’t have the time for. It’s also great to rewatch some of the shows you saw a long time ago and can barely remember, but you know you liked them. Books are great if you can focus on them with chemo brain, audiobooks are also a good alternative. If it’s your cup of tea, video games are a great option for lazy days, especially if you have a lot of new games in your virtual backlog like me. The time has finally come to give them some attention.

Find some light exercise if you can#

However, it’s not a good idea to just sit or lie down throughout the treatment and let your muscles atrophy. Any movement is good, even just walks or some light yoga. I was sometimes happy with just yoga specifically for cancer patients, which you can find plenty of videos about on YouTube. I was lucky that my treatment had some good weeks where I was able to do more active things, so if I wasn’t feeling bad, I went to the gym. My workouts weren’t intense, I exercised with light weights and definitely not to failure. But even that little bit helped me immensely with muscle, neck, and back pain. Unfortunately, movement is really important for health and overall well-being.

Of course, always ask your doctors first if your chosen sport will be safe for you. My team, for example, forbade me from doing any cardio due to the impact of chemo on the heart, so I wouldn’t stress it even more. I can’t say I complained too much about that decision.

Take it as a chance to try new hobbies#

All that newfound free time presents a lot of opportunities to try something new. It could be an old hobby you stopped doing for some mysterious reason, or a brand new one you’ve always wanted to learn. And don’t be afraid to switch between them. Your brain doesn’t work the same way during treatment as it did before, so it would be unnecessarily painful to try to stick with something even if you’re not enjoying it anymore. The main thing is that it should be fulfilling, even if it’s just for a little while. You can read about my attempts to learn new things in my previous post, Gallery of my creative attempts, where you can see that I also jumped between activities very often and didn’t stick with any for long. And that’s perfectly fine.

When you feel good, go outside!#

Walks are a savior for a bad mood. Sometimes, even when you don’t want to, try to force yourself to do it, take a stupid walk for your stupid mental health. Even if it only lasts a few minutes, it will be beneficial. And it’s ideal to take someone close with you and have a good chat; good conversations are always had on such walks. Most of the ideas for my posts were born on these walks, including this one. We often go to the local cemetery, so maybe that’s why most of my posts are a bit morbid and about cancer, but that’s beside the point. The main thing is to move and let the sunshine and a nice new environment lift your spirits.

Even “bad” hobbies are good for killing time#

This is probably one of my most weird and possibly controversial pieces of advice, but it really worked for me. You’ve probably heard of doomscrolling or brainrot, and if not, you’re lucky people. It describes the state of passively consuming content served to you by a social media algorithm, often TikTok, YouTube Shorts, or, in my case, Instagram Reels. For my grandmas and grandpas who sometimes look at my blog, these short videos without any deeper meaning can pull you in for several hours, and when you’re done with them, you don’t even remember what you were watching for so long. It’s all designed to eat up as much of your time as possible and keep you on the platform for as long as possible.

It all sounds terribly unproductive and addictive, which is true if you have better things you can do with your time. But I’ve found that it’s very useful for those moments when you really can’t do anything but suffer and wait for it to end. For me, the main example was during infusions. The hospital caused me crazy nausea towards the end of my treatment. I’d feel instantly sick and just waited all those hours to get out and collapse at home. But when you have this usually unhealthy option to skip a solid amount of time and not remember much of it, suddenly it’s not such a bad thing. I’m not saying everyone should try it, but it’s something that worked pretty well for me. Try at your own risk.

Lean on your loved ones#

Chemotherapy is really hard to get through if you’re doing it alone. So don’t be afraid to lean on your support system. When you’re feeling bad, complain. When things are going well and you’re having a bearable or even good day, tell them about it too. And if there are some things you don’t want to burden your loved ones with, maybe try writing, whether it’s a public blog or a private journal. The main thing is to have some way to vent both the bad and good experiences and not bottle them up.

Come out gradually#

When you first start telling your family, close and distant friends, and the general public about your diagnosis, you’ll probably suddenly be overwhelmed with a bunch of kind and empathetic messages about how you have to stay strong, that it will all pass soon and everything will be okay, and that if you ever need anything, you should reach out to them and they’ll take care of it. It’s a very nice feeling, even if the reactions can sometimes be weird, whether too pitiful or way overly optimistic and positive, it’s great to know that so many people are thinking of you.

However, a lot of that support quickly fades. People have their own lives, and sometimes it’s hard to understand how long chemotherapy can last (mine was for six months, and it’s one of the shorter versions). Messages are frequent, kind, and thoughtful at the beginning, but in my opinion, it’s a bit unfair to expect people to remember after a few months that this person is still going through the same thing and it’s not getting much better; they’re just balder now and don’t have eyebrows and eyelashes. On the contrary, it’s quite understandable. Life changes quickly when a person is healthy, and it’s hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone who’s going through the same painful cycle for six months straight.

That’s why I think it’s worth making these diagnosis announcements gradually. This way, you can enjoy the well wishes and kind thoughts of others for a longer period of time. I announced my health status to the wider public (close friends on Instagram, where I added at least 70 people for this purpose) only after three months of treatment. Even today, after six months, there are a lot of people who don’t know about it at all unless they’ve heard about it from friends. And I don’t mind at all; at least I have plenty of new people to discuss it with.

Don’t be afraid to use your new ace in the hole#

Let’s face it, cancer is a great excuse for everything. People are suddenly obligated to be nice to you and do things for you they wouldn’t normally do, and then they can feel like they’ve done a good deed. Chemotherapy, as I’ve mentioned several times today, is a terrible thing, so you definitelly deserve this card. Don’t be afraid to use it, no matter how weird it sounds, it’s one of the very few good things about cancer.

And don’t be afraid to let people help you. This period is incredibly difficult, and even a small kindness can change the mood of your whole day. It’s quite understandable to feel like a burden to the people around you when you suddenly shift into survival mode, but if the people around you love you, they’ll also be happy to help and do some good deeds for you. Try not to feel bad about it, it won’t last forever.

Don’t feel bad for doing nothing all day#

Sometimes there are just days when you can’t do anything. Whether it’s due to physical pain and nausea or psychological exhaustion and a loss of motivation, which chemo also loves to cause, some days you just have to survive, to kill the time with the knowledge that tomorrow might be better. Don’t compare yourself to your former self, because soon that person will seem like a completely different personality in every way. Allow yourself not to be running at 100% all the time and prepare for a lot of unproductive and boring days. It’s all just for the purpose of survival, and if you’re managing that, you’re doing a great job.

Try to keep a record of things#

Even if you’ve never tried something like a journal or mood tracker, I think it’s very useful here. It gives you a bit of perspective on the whole situation, and you might find that it’s not all just pain and suffering, but that there are good days too, which make it all worthwhile. Furthermore, it’s also helpful to keep a record of side effects and things you want to discuss with your doctor at your next appointment. Keeping a record of things is nice, and I think more people should do it.

Take it one hour at a time#

At the beginning, the treatment can seem unimaginably long. In my case, I was lucky enough to only have six months with a very high chance of a complete cure, but even so, it felt endless. So, especially at the beginning, it really helped me to focus on each day as a single unit of time that I was currently living and not think about all the ones that were still ahead of me. I remember being at my third infusion out of twelve, and it felt like so little for all the trouble I’d already endured. But my partner came up with a great thought: that I would never have to experience a third infusion again. It’s a simple thing, but sometimes it’s hard to admit it to yourself. The next one would be the fourth, then the fifth, and then I would be halfway there. It helped me a lot to focus on the relentless march of time, which this time, unusually, was bringing good things. Everything ends someday, but that also applies to the bad moments that we all go through. It’s a nice way to think about it.