Fatigue and other things
The eyebrows are back, but not completely filled in. I can see their shape! The eyelashes are almost as long as they used to be.
My hair is so soft & fuzzy!!!!!
Radiation SEs? They're still not as bad as chemo, but they still suck. I mean, I was used to stumbling through my life and faking being awake for years even though I was tired. Learning how to survive on less sleep without consuming copious amounts of caffeine, was how I managed. I was working full time, going to school part time (sometimes commuting an hour each way), taking care of a young child and attempting to maintain a home for our family, with all that entails. Any person doing that would be tired. Well, if I thought I knew what tired was, I was COMPLETELY WRONG...
The kind of tired I am now is so completely unfamiliar to me. I wake up feeling normal-person tired. You know, give me a few minutes to gather my wits, maybe splash my face, and I'll be right with you. I can deal with that. Then the day wears on, and I wear out. I used to make it until dinner time. That was a few weeks ago. Now? I think I make it to just about lunch time, maybe 6 hours after I got out of bed to begin with. But there are things I have to do, like pick my son up from school and shuttle us to whatever appointment or commitment we might have. I keep saying that I will drive to my rads appointments as long as I am able to think straight and keep my eyes open, and I say that completely intending to go every day so I don't have to have days tacked on to the end to get me to the prescribed number of treatments. Well, I think I'm getting close to not being able to make good on that intention. Is it the end of the world if I have to have treatment days made up? Not at all, but for me, this has all been going on since last May, and there is still a fair distance to go, what with Tamoxifen around the corner (and having to take that for 5 years minimum) and reconstruction. But at this point, I'm lucky to be awake long enough to get dinner on the table, laundry folded, and get the dishes taken care of. I haven't been this tired since I attempted to breast feed my son when he was newborn. And even then, I think I was able to cope with it better. I'm sure some people would say, "If you're so tired, take a nap, you're home all day" and I would except for the part where I can't fall asleep before school gets out because I fear I may not wake up in time to be there on time, and I can't nap between school and rads for the same reason. There are, of course, days when I feel downright narcoleptic because my brain doesn't get a say so in what my body elects to do, and I keep dozing off for just 5 or 10 minutes at a time. Those are the days I jump out of my skin when I awake because I'm late!!!! It's not a good feeling, what with the fuzz in my head and muddled thougths. Ugh, even thinking about it makes me tired...
My skin looks permanently sunburned. Fortunately, it appears that the Aquaphor is doing the job of keeping most of it moisturized and unbroken, but the burn hurts. Sometimes a lot. There are blisters, and there's been a skin break. The nurse practitioner prescribed a cream, and it seems to be helping. What was really nice was seeing the pharmacy staff. They pretty much knew me on sight because of my monthly asthma meds, but then the evil prescription insurance said I had to switch to 90 day supplies of maintenance meds that I could only obtain either at one of their pharmacies or through the mail. It was nice to see all of them a
gain, because anytime I get a one shot medication I go to them, and they've all been very supportive of me since they found out about the BC. They even asked about my mom because she was pretty much a regular herself since she picked up the antinausea meds.
I want a break from this, I have enough other nonsense related to my job and the ex starting to pile up now, and I'm stretched pretty thin as far as coping with all the stress, and with mountains of stress, my overactive imagination kicks into high gear and it usually gets the best of me. Thankfully I have some really amazing people in my life who help me make all of this work. I can't thank them enough! You know who you are, and you all rock!!!!!!!!
TTYL