cancer – day 140
I finally felt up to giving Gary an update for Chain today, though there’s not much good news from me right now. But most of this blog is about stuff that has to do with getting back to Chain or what state I’m in for getting back to work in radiation or not.
Things have gotten cumulatively more degenerative (which they told us would happen, but it’s still hard to believe until it actually happens, you just can’t believe it can get worse until it actually does get worse).
I had harbored a quiet hope to go to Denver for CSCMP, but knowing the situation, I never did register for the conference, so now Chain can just cancel my hotel and won’t lose anything for having had the reservation. I wish I could go, but I don’t expect by any stretch of the imagination to be healthy enough to be able to get out there. And then I’d probably be too tired to do a tenth of what I’d normally do networking anyway, so why put all that strain and effort into getting out there only to crash out and miss everything anyway?
Chain’s doing great without me. Everything with MBBC sounds so exciting!!! I was really happy to hear about all the movement and activity from Gary. It’s going to be so much fun to jump back in when my treatments are over.
I had to admit that health-wise things are not so great. My eyesight’s still degenerating and now (after already having gone to the eye doctor and gotten a new prescription three weeks ago) is to the point that I can’t see well enough to drive a car after dusk, and I’m wearing magnifying specs with my contacts in order to see the laptop screen right now, while my fingertips are numb and clumsy for typing. Not being able to be at the computer messing around has been more annoying than I expected. I didn’t realize how much I read news and such online on a daily basis. But I’m reading a couple of good books and resting almost all the time now, I don’t have a lot of options but to rest and heal because there just isn’t any energy left for anything else! 🙂 My balance is off, so I’m not even taking little bike rides for exercise now, and my little walks are limited to just the six or so blocks between the house and the hospital because I seem to trip over my own feet and on every little twig and seam in the sidewalk. It’s slow going, anything that I do.
I tell ya, I have a new appreciation for the very elderly now, one that I probably never would have developed without aging like this in a matter of weeks instead of over decades like a normal person. My body feels about triple my actual age right now, with the exception being that I still have all my teeth. 🙂 It’s been absolutely surreal. Thank Heavens I don’t have kids to take care of and I can focus on recovery and managing the cancer treatments. My oncologist says the side effects have been especially severe for me because of my age (mid-30s cancers are apparently especially brutal in comparison to over-age-40 cancers) and so, being young, my body is fighting hard against the chemo. Which is good in a way, it means there’s a strong healthy body in there battling for survival, but wow, does that battle take a lot of energy!!!
After chemo I go into radiation (in October), and my understanding there is that radiation fatigue is even more debilitating than that of chemo (which of course I can’t even imagine experiencing right now). It may not be very likely, but there’s some chance I’ll be able to work 1/3 to 1/2 time during October-December, or I may not be able to work at all until sometime in January. It’s impossible to tell right now, but I keep trying to get a sense of it so we can plan what help I can be at work or not. It’s really important to me that MBBC not suffer because of my health and limitations, and I really want to come back strong as soon as possible, and stay healthy from that point forward, of course.
Whenever I think about how hard most people have it in chemo, gosh, I feel like such a baby for all the complaining I do about how the side effects and difficult it is. Almost anyone else going through this has a more difficult situation than mine, and though the side effects may not be as bad, that doesn’t mean the overall situation isn’t actually much more challenging.