18 April 2012

This Week, Two Steps Forward


I've been quite overwhelmed since surgery with emotions coming to the surface after completing the bulk of the physical challenges associated with my course of treatment.  This week I'm feeling more balanced, although I do not know why.  It could be the mere action of acknowledging the emotions, or allowing myself to feel some of the emotions I was fighting.  Or it could be the realization that I probably have another surgery ahead of me. In any event, I'm just going to accept the calm and enjoy it before another storm hits.

I'm still not feeling very powerful.  I'm struggling with exercise and eating well.  I'm still in a holding pattern on my Couch to 5 K program; I have not been released to run.  I think I'll feel like doing that when I am given the go-ahead.  Or maybe that's just my excuse right now and I'm full of shit.  We'll see in a week.

I have been rather busy working towards getting the house up to speed for summer - garden, pool, patio etc.  I'm putting in motion what needs to happen to keep the kids (and me) sane - camps, sitters, activities.  I'm looking forward to summer.  Except for one thing... the HEAT!

My hot flashes are frequent and getting worse.  They used to last just a couple of minutes, now an episode can go on for 15 or 20 minutes, waking me totally up and making it impossible to fall back to sleep.  I need to do some more research on that.  I'm not sure what the physiological mechanism is that causes them.  I know it's triggered by estrogen starvation and in normal menopause that can be countered by adding estrogen through diet (soy, etc) or supplements ('natural' or prescription hormones.)  I can't do either.  I NEED to starve my body of estrogen in order to ensure that my estrogen positive cancer dies a complete and painful death.  So I have a fan set up on my side of the bed and I throw off the covers a lot.  I sense that hard exercise will help.  The kind of exercise that makes your body sweat, tuning up the internal thermostat.  That's another reason I want to start running.  

My residual chemo symptoms are still plaguing me.  My fingernails still threaten to detach, and are extremely brittle, crumbly even.  I'm combating that by keeping them very short.  I'm monitoring my toenails for the same problem but quite frankly, I can't see that far to be able to tell and I just can't bend that way either.  I'm going for a pedicure tomorrow and I'll have them checked.  If they look stable I can get a nice color put on, if not, clear again so we can see what's going on.  My eyebrows are almost gone.  It's weird how the hair falls out and grows back in waves.  My eyelashes fell out when my head hair started growing back.  My eyebrows fell out when my eyelashes started growing back.  And for you curious types, the pubic hair fell out first and grew back first.  (I know you were dying to ask.)