Long time, no blog.
I have hair now. I’m doing well. Physically I am getting there – I have lost the chemo weight, so now just need to lose that additional 30 pounds. 🙂 I feel good although I still have some joint issues including tendonitis, and I might still have C Diff – need to get another kit to be sure (SO awesome).
The main issue now I would say is my brain. Chemo kinda wrecked it.
It’s getting better – I am not losing words as much as I used to. But nor am I pre-chemo Kate. I forget things – dates, appointments, plans. Just this morning Gregory had a 9:30 appointment to get his hearing checked which we barely made because for some reason I thought it was at 10:30. I used to handle everything for our vacations – from flights to rental cars to checking us in to getting us to the airport – and now I am lucky if I handle half of that correctly. I was obsessively early or on time before chemo, and now I am lucky if I remember to be where I need to be before it’s half an hour past the time I was supposed to be there. It’s embarrassing. I have a hundred things to do today and I just sat and stared at my computer trying to think of them and couldn’t. I have a list, of course, but at one time, I could have thought of half a dozen things before even looking at my list.
One of the frustrating things about this mental impairment is that people don’t know. Everyone expects you to be messed up during chemo, but after, everyone thinks you just recover and go back to yourself. And maybe, hopefully, I will. But it hasn’t happened yet.
When you prepare for chemotherapy, you know all the possible side effects. You know how long your treatment is going to last and what to expect while you’re going through it. You know you’ll be sick. You know things will suck. What you – or at least, what I – don’t (didn’t) realize is how long lasting the effects are. I didn’t anticipate joint pain, but I really didn’t anticipate loss of mental acuity. And other people don’t really realize it either. I look healthy, yes – but every day is a challenge.
That said – would I do it differently? No. Because although I am struggling daily with the little details of life, there are two things I am not struggling with: cancer, or the looming feeling that my cancer will return and kill me. I killed it. And I’m paying the price, but I feel like, in the end, it’s a small price to pay for my life and my sanity.
complikated 