cancer – day 118
No such luck, on the whole let’s-hope-Mark-feels-better-so-he’s-nicer front. Keep crossing your fingers for tomorrow. We seem to both have the stuffy head thing going on, so I’ve been keeping pretty close tabs on my temperature and, though it shifts quite a bit, I haven’t gone over 99 degrees this time.
Very busy day. Spent the ENTIRE morning filling out forms for this genetic counseling thing which I suspect is a waste of time because the genetic counselor (now there’s a job title) said they are going go to though the forms for me and then make a determination whether genetic testing is appropriate. Except I already told them that Dr. Lombardi already wants the genetic testing done. So, here I am all morning filling out forms so they can “determine” that I need genetics blood testing when it’s in reality already been recommended by my medical oncologist. Ah, bureaucratic paperwork. Far be it for me to buck the system and not fill out their forms before going in and telling them just do the blood draws, run the tests, and let my doctor and I know the results. That would an over-the-top Tenacious C being impatient and not putting up with unnecessary time-wasting paperwork. But chemo girl is much more pliable and docile. Until you do something that actually gets in the way of her care. Then look out because that sort of behavior gets zero tolerance and brings back Tenacious C to the surface in a flash. Guess I have my own liitle Jeckel&Hylde thing going, chemo girl is the quiet one you can practically walk all over, Tenacious C is the one who’s not taking any B.S. in any way shape or form.
That explains a lot actually, about things I’m tolerating now that had no place in my prior life. Wonder how tolerant I’ll be after treatment. Then again, I won’t be “done” with treatment until January, 2014. Who knows what kind of person I’ll be at that point.
So after the genetic counseling and blood draw (uck. even with a port, uck) I have a little public speaking thing to prepare for the CSCMP meeting tonight. At least that will be fun to do, though all together this is like the equivalent of a pre-cancer typical Cynthia 10-hour work day. Fine in my previous regime, not so good now. These forms are taking so long, I’m not seeing any time for a nap in this day, ugh. Maybe after the CSCMP meeting but before Mark is home from yoga, maybe then I can sneak in a few winks.
The fatigue thing is weird. I’m exhausted tired, and I mean EXHAUSTED as in too tired to reach down to pick up my socks from the floor in the closet and instead I take out new socks from the drawer because it’s hand height and required less effort. The first week of this chemo session, I slept practically all week. Now I’m not sleeping but still ridiculously tired. Everything takes me ages to do, but somehow I still do things. It’s the old me in me. Monday I did laundry. Tuesday I went nuts trying to reorder prescription refills, chasing down why I haven’t gotten any disability payments from CA yet, and searching for the genetics forms I seemed to have files too smartly for myself to find again. Now that was an exhausting day, because I was stressed too. But Tuesday night I went to do this thing called Reike, which is sort of a kind of massage/energy thing that a couple of my friends are in to and they wanted to work with me on it. The bummer is that we were hoping it would help me be more relaxed and hopefully sleep better at night, but exactly the opposite happened and I couldn’t sleep to save my life on Tuesday night. Wednesday either. Two ambiens to get three hours of sleep Wednesday night. Not good.
Wednesday I managed to slow down a little in the pace of my day, and went to my second-ever yoga session. I liked it, and I am going to have to do more of it. I first need to catch up to Mark a little so I can go to classes with him. He’s been practicing yoga quite a while I guess, though he got out of it for six months or so, so he’s like returning now. Still, he knows a lot more about it than I do! But I’m hoping to get both the body calmness and quietness of mind that I’m under the impression that yoga can help with. Yoga is definitely recommended in like every cancer-recovery booklet I’ve read, so I have to give it a try to see what it’s like!