Health
I am still horribly underweight and lacking an appetite. Fatigue visits most afternoons, and when Fatigue is taking a break, the stupor from ingesting 30mg of morphine-based painkiller (my wonderful Oxycontin) will have me zoning in and out for an hour or two. Luckily that only happens twice a day.
I have suffered such severe muscle wastage my shoulder blades are clicking and popping, and the ache, usually at around 2-3/10 for pain can get up to a 6-7 depending on how I'm sitting (ie don't lean back!) or sleeping (ie don't lean back!). My posture is shot to hell. My persistent cough, a worry of tumour blooms in the lung, is still persistent, though manageable, and my abdomen (and other infected lymph node sites) can hurt a touch when I'm hacking out my lungs. (I don't think I'm hacking as such, but my family probably think I am). The lymph node beginning to show proud from the base of my throat/neck where it connects to the shoulder is a good example of what cancer feels like. I can give it a squeeze, this hard oval lump, but it doesn't really cause any pain. Though now and then when I'm trying to stretch out my right shoulder blade, the lymph node does a bit of shifting and popping too, and for a second a nice white blaze of pain may occur.
So yeah, that's the doom and gloom side of things.
On the sweetness and light side? I'm generally pretty good in the mornings. It's not until early afternoon when Fatigue will come a knocking so I sometimes, sometimes, sometimes feel almost normal (though my normal is a long way from the truth of other people's normal) and I feel good and happy to be alive.
Jules massages my shoulder on a daily basis (usually - sometimes she is so exhausted I cannot bear to ask her to do it, and this frustrates her, but she needs that rest). She uses oils and deep heat and I, who used to hate massage and the surrendering of oneself to massage, *need* to have them now. They feel wonderful, if often painful.
I'm also seeing a chiropractor who is trying to get my lumbar back into shape (my lower spine), and he suspects if he can do this, he can straighten my posture, bringing back my shoulders and relieving a lot of the symptoms I'm experiencing. I'm not usually a big believer in the chiro (past experience) but I could tell straight away that this guy was a gun. After my first session with him I was actually pretty crook the next day, with the bowels going crazy - possibly a detoxing effect of his treatment. I'm also combining this with myotherapy (massage and acupuncture) to give further pain relief.
The energy levels are slowly, ever so slowly, climbing out of the doledrums. I still have very little and it gets used up very fast, but I think I'm getting stronger, or at least beginning to suffer less from the side-effects of the radiation I had before Christmas.
For those who have been trying to phone me I apologise. I have been avoiding the phone for the last four weeks at least - it's been too hard and exhuasting going over a lot of the same things to people (and these people are my friends, family and loved ones) and it takes it out of me and often gets the cough going. Email is still a great contact point for me, though people probably think I'm ignoring them there too - I'm not though. I just have a lot to respond to, and I want to do the responses some sort of justice, which also means I don't get to do more than 1 or 2 replies a day before I retire from the computer. Afternoons and evenings, once a very productive time for me, are now spent sitting, lying, groaning or moaning, or simply phasing in and out. Nothing much is happening for that part of the day. At about 9pm I sort of become myself again and indulge in dvd/tv of a not so brainless variety, where my not so reliable brain can take it all in and enjoy.
So in summary: still alive, very happy to be so, always tired, so very tired, skinny as a sack of bones and aching aching aching.
I have suffered such severe muscle wastage my shoulder blades are clicking and popping, and the ache, usually at around 2-3/10 for pain can get up to a 6-7 depending on how I'm sitting (ie don't lean back!) or sleeping (ie don't lean back!). My posture is shot to hell. My persistent cough, a worry of tumour blooms in the lung, is still persistent, though manageable, and my abdomen (and other infected lymph node sites) can hurt a touch when I'm hacking out my lungs. (I don't think I'm hacking as such, but my family probably think I am). The lymph node beginning to show proud from the base of my throat/neck where it connects to the shoulder is a good example of what cancer feels like. I can give it a squeeze, this hard oval lump, but it doesn't really cause any pain. Though now and then when I'm trying to stretch out my right shoulder blade, the lymph node does a bit of shifting and popping too, and for a second a nice white blaze of pain may occur.
So yeah, that's the doom and gloom side of things.
On the sweetness and light side? I'm generally pretty good in the mornings. It's not until early afternoon when Fatigue will come a knocking so I sometimes, sometimes, sometimes feel almost normal (though my normal is a long way from the truth of other people's normal) and I feel good and happy to be alive.
Jules massages my shoulder on a daily basis (usually - sometimes she is so exhausted I cannot bear to ask her to do it, and this frustrates her, but she needs that rest). She uses oils and deep heat and I, who used to hate massage and the surrendering of oneself to massage, *need* to have them now. They feel wonderful, if often painful.
I'm also seeing a chiropractor who is trying to get my lumbar back into shape (my lower spine), and he suspects if he can do this, he can straighten my posture, bringing back my shoulders and relieving a lot of the symptoms I'm experiencing. I'm not usually a big believer in the chiro (past experience) but I could tell straight away that this guy was a gun. After my first session with him I was actually pretty crook the next day, with the bowels going crazy - possibly a detoxing effect of his treatment. I'm also combining this with myotherapy (massage and acupuncture) to give further pain relief.
The energy levels are slowly, ever so slowly, climbing out of the doledrums. I still have very little and it gets used up very fast, but I think I'm getting stronger, or at least beginning to suffer less from the side-effects of the radiation I had before Christmas.
For those who have been trying to phone me I apologise. I have been avoiding the phone for the last four weeks at least - it's been too hard and exhuasting going over a lot of the same things to people (and these people are my friends, family and loved ones) and it takes it out of me and often gets the cough going. Email is still a great contact point for me, though people probably think I'm ignoring them there too - I'm not though. I just have a lot to respond to, and I want to do the responses some sort of justice, which also means I don't get to do more than 1 or 2 replies a day before I retire from the computer. Afternoons and evenings, once a very productive time for me, are now spent sitting, lying, groaning or moaning, or simply phasing in and out. Nothing much is happening for that part of the day. At about 9pm I sort of become myself again and indulge in dvd/tv of a not so brainless variety, where my not so reliable brain can take it all in and enjoy.
So in summary: still alive, very happy to be so, always tired, so very tired, skinny as a sack of bones and aching aching aching.