So I've set up the tracking system (part 1). Now comes the actual living—the daily grind of maintaining it whilst you're also trying not to die from chemo. This is where most people quit. Not because the system is complicated, but because life is complicated, and chemo makes it harder.
The Daily Routine
My morning check-in happens around 7 AM, assuming I'm awake and functional. I pull my WHOOP data first. It's right there on my wrist—HRV, resting heart rate, sleep score, recovery percentage. Takes ninety seconds. Then I log into my custom ChatGPT and answer the same five questions: how rough do I feel, nausea level (1-10), sleep quality, any breakthrough symptoms, and any interventions I tried yesterday that are worth tracking.
Evening review happens around 9 PM, before bed. Pull the WHOOP data again, check exercise strain if I did anything, and log how the day actually went. Did nausea spike? When? Did I manage to eat? How much? What was I doing when symptoms hit?
It sounds like nothing. Two five-minute sessions a day. But when you're on chemo and your brain is foggy and you're knackered, five minutes feels like an hour. Some days I skipped it. Some days I logged it three times because I was obsessing. The key is building it into your routine like brushing your teeth—automatic, not something you have to think about.
The Real Breakthroughs
Domperidone and nausea. About week two of tracking, I noticed nausea was peaking on day 3-4 of my cycle, specifically in the afternoons. My oncologist suggested domperidone as a breakthrough medication. I took it. Nausea dropped from a 7/10 to a 4/10. That single intervention, caught through tracking, changed everything. Suddenly I could eat again.
Dexamethasone timing. Steroids make you wired. I was taking them on the same schedule every day, and they were destroying my sleep. The tracking data made this obvious—high HRV at night (meaning my nervous system was fired up), broken sleep, then low recovery scores the next day. I talked to my oncologist about shifting the timing to take them earlier in the day. Sleep improved dramatically. This isn't something I would have figured out without the data.
The keto experiment. I started strict keto about a week post-chemo. Macros: 20g carbs, 70g protein, 260g fat. I tracked everything in my custom ChatGPT. The data showed that on days I stuck to it (which was maybe 3 out of 7), symptom severity was noticeably lower. Was this placebo? Possibly. But the pattern showed up consistently enough that I kept it in my rotation.
Exercise Timing and WHOOP
WHOOP gave me permission to do something counterintuitive: stop forcing exercise. I set a rule—if my recovery score was below 60%, I didn't exercise. If it was 60-75%, light activity only. Above 75%, go for it.
Sounds stupid, right? Just trust a number? But here's the thing: my body wanted to rest, and I was overriding that with "I need to stay positive and stay moving." The data let me listen to my body without guilt. Recovery actually improved because I stopped pushing through when I was already compromised.
Sleep became the anchor of everything. Solid 7-hour nights—which happened maybe twice a week—were preceded by specific conditions: magnesium glycinate 30 minutes before bed, no screens after 7 PM, room temperature at 18°C. When I tracked it properly, the connection was unmistakable.
The Tool Limitations
Manus AI was supposed to be brilliant for this, but it had issues tracking complex protocols. ChatGPT's memory worked better for my purposes, even with its limitations. I learned to structure data in ways the AI could actually remember—bullet points, explicit timestamps, clear cause-and-effect formatting.
WHOOP was reliable but occasionally nonsensical. Some days the recovery score would plummet for no reason I could identify. I learned not to obsess over single-day anomalies, but instead look for three-day trends. That made the data useful instead of just noise.
Building Knowledge for Future Cycles
Here's what I didn't expect: chemo will come back. The tracking wasn't just about this cycle—it was building a personal knowledge base for the next one. Now I know: domperidone works for me. Taking dexamethasone early works. Sleep matters more than exercise. Keto might help.
When the next cycle comes, I'm not starting from zero. I'm starting with hard-won data about what works for me, not what works for some guy in a clinical trial.
Is it work? Yes. Does it sometimes feel like you're just administering your own decline? Absolutely. But having granular visibility into what's happening in your body, and what actually helps, is something special. It transforms chemo from something happening to you into something you're actively managing.
And that matters more than you'd think.