A few homely truths

So, a few things I haven't read in the chemotherapy literature, but which seem to be true based on experience.

Chemotherapy makes one's urine smell like the distilled effluvia of a dozen swamp monsters. Not that I've spent a lot of time distilling swamp monster effluvia, but you get the picture.

Mouth sores happen mostly at the hinges of the jaw. This can make eating difficult even if you've rinsed with baking-soda so that your food doesn't make things worse. They also seem to occur at the edges of teeth. I've fallen asleep and awakened with a nice fresh crop, right along the line of my upper teeth. Therefore, one bites and chews with great care. If I needed lessons in attentive eating, this would be it.

Baking soda rinses make orange juice taste very odd indeed.

The weary, weak feeling caused by chemo is more like mono than it is like the weariness after surgery, or childbirth. One feels as though one could zip through a series of errands, only to accomplish one or two and have to return home for several hours of rest. (I would not have expected the literature to tell me this, because how could the writer know the reader's experience of health or illness?) I expect that my experience with all three sorts of exhaustion is helping me to bear this -- it must be pure hell for some of the more vigorous, athletic types to be so reduced.