The New and Not-So-Improved Me

Among those whom I like or admire,
I can find no common denominator,
but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
-W. H. Auden

Yeah, you know what day it is!

Sorry to give an update on a day I typically reserve for the lovey stuff, but it's been too long and I know you're all just waiting with baited breath to hear how my weekend was and how I'm doing this week.

I accomplished everything I set out to accomplish last weekend...slept in, napped, took down tree. Everything but the errand running. Actually, I didn't leave the house all weekend except once to make a run to Hardee's to satisfy my hot ham & cheese craving.

I am feeling better every day despite a severe lack of sleep. It's my own dumb fault for being a life-long night person. I sleep the best/most sound in the hours of the morning when I have to get up for work. I have always come alive at night. Not so much in the mornings though. When I feel well now, I run around like a chicken with its head cut off (what a terrible expression) trying to get everything done before I feel bad again. My life revolves around these 3 week cycles.

I am accustomed to being a fairly high energy person, so this "new me" is still difficult to recognize and accept. I get winded just walking from the parking lot into our building at work (not a long walk), whereas I used to be able to walk for miles and miles and then come home and do one of my workout DVDs...and this was all before I went to work (when I woke up in time). Now just getting ready and getting to work exhausts me.

Part of that is just the normal, to-be-expected chemo-related junk, but the other part is my lungs. My lung capacity has been diminished by the fluid build-up (pleural effusion to get all technical), and my left lung has been scarred by the two lung drains (thoracentesis) they had to do.Yet I am grateful that I can still do as much as I can and that I'm not totally (or even partially) incapacitated.

I walked around the block the other night in an futile attempt to maybe begin to lose some of the 20 pounds I've gained in the past 6 months from steroids, chemo-induced menopause, altered eating habits, and lack of activity. My doctor's not worried about the weight, but she's not the one having to go out and buy bigger sized clothes now is she? Twenty pounds on a shorty like me is just wrong, let me tell ya...it's got nowhere to go. Anyway, that tiny little walk wiped me out. When I took down the Christmas tree and decorations on Saturday, I needed a 2 hour nap just to recuperate from that little bit of activity.

I hear people (and by 'people' I mean other people, not any of you guys) talk about being tired or sick, and I'm sure they are, I know I was tired and sick at times before all of this; but I've never in my life ever felt this kind of tired and/or sick. And that makes me want to tell those people to shut up and quit their whining, only with a few extra words thrown in for emphasis (trying to keep it clean here). Someone recently told me (as I stood there with a scarf on my head) that they'd been sick for "two days straight". OMG, two whole days?!!? Yeah, that's terrible.

(Yes, I realize that I'm the one who's whining now. And that other people would say, "OMG, six whole months?!!? Yeah, that's terrible.")