Rashes, Flushes and Steroids

The grocery store had organic strawberries on sale and so I bought them. Silly me. It is too early for decent strawberries. But when I got them home I ate a few and as expected, they didn’t taste like much. But that evening my face broke out in a rash. And all I could think is that I’d developed an allergy to strawberries, and tasteless ones at that! When I saw Amy on Tuesday I told her about it, and she thought it could be strawberries, or it might be from the Taxol. She told me to apply hydrocortisone cream to my face and take Benedryl before bed. I thought, oh good, Benadryl. Maybe I will get some sleep after the steroids I get during chemo. And I did. Three and a half hours. I finally got out of bed at six and headed downstairs to coffee and breakfast. I usually don’t eat right away, but again, thanks to the steroids, I was ravenous. Two pieces of toast with peanut butter and marmalade and a half a bowl of oatmeal later I think I will be good for a while. It’s odd, but it’s as if the steroids had a delayed effect this week. Coming home from Hopkins I was very tired and took a nap for about an hour. And at dinner at Rachel, I ate only half my flatbread. but we had a lovely time with our neighbors and I had high hopes for sleeping. Ha! I debuted my wig and Ray and Irene told me it looked great. Today I’m going to head over to Costco and Trader Joe’s, and with any luck I will be ready for a nap when I get home.