cancer – day 323
It should have been a 20-minute phone call. This isn’t complicated stuff, and having someone else working on it is supposed to reduce my workload and stress. Well, when I finally got off the phone from what became a 75-minute call, I was completely wiped out and all I could do was put my head down on my desk and cry.
I’ve already been at it since 7AM without a break, after a thirteen-hour work day yesterday. It’s only 2:30PM, and I don’t know how I’m going to get it together to get done the things that need to happen today in order for what has to happen next to be able to happen when it needs to happen (makes perfect sense, right?).
I have these two major projects overlapping, and a few smaller things to work in. I’ve run both of the large projects more than once before, always with each as its own full-time project, one in spring and the other in fall (winter-summer are the same, one massive deliverable and then a smattering of little stuff). But while I was out on medical leave during cancer treatment last fall, the company moved the fall project to spring, while keeping the spring project, so now we’re trying to do both at once.
Meanwhile I’m nauseas from the tamoxifen, tired all the time (amplified by the anti-nausea medicine), still sore from surgery and radiation if I stretch my right arm too far, too weak to lift or hold anything heavier than my laptop or a single binder, and in constant pain in my hands and feet, sometimes (but not always, thankfully) so severe it’s completely debilitating. I work until I can’t stand it and then I rest, often just brain dead in front of the TV (never a common habit for me previously) or sometimes playing world of warcraft. (Oh, and I’m teaching a graduate class at GGU this term. At least it’s just a cyber-class so the timing of when things have to be done for my students is somewhat flexible.)
I don’t do anything social except sometimes communicate on facebook, I never drive to Sac because it’s too far and hurts my hands and feet, and the only useful activity I’ve been able to force myself to do occasionally is keeping my house relatively clean. Wiping counters and vacuuming have become my version of getting exercise.
The cancer treatment/recovery life is not over just because I’m done with chemotherapy and radiation treatment. But for my work I try to act like I’m fine and get as much done as I always have. And I can look at what I have done in the past two months since I went back to work, and I know I’ve done a lot, in most cases just as much or more than as if I had never had cancer. But the cost is the rest of my life, outside of work, which is, literally, non-existent.
I’m so wiped out when the weekend comes around that I can hardly do anything but sit and “rest.” The thought of driving hours just to go to a milonga or dance where I’ll hardly be able to dance because of the neuropathy, and then knowing how late I get home and how much rest I won’t get if I go, well, it’s just too much. Last weekend I was almost motivated enough to go find a yoga class in Georgetown since that’s only 20 minutes away, but then I started cleaning the kitchen and next thing I knew I was exhausted again.
My parents keep telling me to remember that my body’s been through a lot and it’s going to take time to recover. Friends tell me not to “over-do” it. Hell, even my doctor’s forms to the insurance company say I’m only supposed to work half-time, but here I am. While it would be easier to go half-time, financially I just can’t justify it. Yet this life-long problem I’ve had about the level of professionalism I expect of myself and feeling driven to do everything possible to produce the most professional outcome to deadline, well, apparently even cancer hasn’t gotten me to let go of that in myself. Great for a zooming career, bad for a cancer survivor.
My life isn’t completely awful or anything, far from it, and I have some really good things to write about too, but this is where I am at the moment.