Slept over 8 hours last night, quite solidly with only minor interruptions. I think this means last week's multi-day festival of massive lower GI failure and concomitant sleep dysfunction has drawn to a (relatively) gentle close.

As I've said before, it's like driving a car on ice. Every correction I make for a symptom or an issue risks a more disastrous overcorrection in the other direction. Try to miss the pothole, find myself heading for the ditch. Steer away from the ditch, head for a sheer wall being climbed by a roped-together team of widows and orphans fresh from the bus I just ran off the road. So to speak. (Metaphors tortured professionally here, no appointment needed.)

Two main lessons learned:

When I take Imodium (or any analogous medication), I must take a laxative in the morning to make sure I get a timely system restart. Regardless of whether I feel like it. That's a checklist item now.

Also, I can only generalize from the experience of each chemo infusion round. What works in one round doesn't always translate well into the next round. This means I never really know what I'm doing. I have to accept that, and be accordingly flexible when making self-care decisions. Even with a checklist in play.

I tell you, cancer is one giant set of Valuable Life Lessons™. Some days I feel like I'm living in a Hallmark Movie of the Week cliche.