Wow, I have been "busy" just resting and receiving wonderful visitors then felt exhausted from just being awake and talking to people! I also was spending little of my time organizing my house - just the light stuff. How can I sit still and look at stuff and shake my head, "that thing got to be somewhere else or given away!". In the last three weeks, my level of energy has gone down quite a bit - the repeated chemotherapy treatments has taken a toll on my body but the good news is that I have one more to go! The last and 12th one will be on Jan. 25th. Yes!! My oncologist and I decided that I could return to work by March 31st with 2 months recovery time, although, it will be many months for me to fully recover, I will be expected to be mostly recovered by then.
As doctors and cancer survivors warned me, my fatigue really hit me good. But I got tad bit energy back for just few days because I received 3 instead of 4 chemotherapy drugs last week. This drug, Bleomycin had to be dropped because my repeated pulmonary function tests have shown a gradual decline in my lung function which the last one (from last week) was reported 15% down from the beginning of treatment. But I will recover with time as my oncologist said. Maybe that is why I am tired as well. The other chemotherapy drugs continue to work through my body for days anyway.
Eating little by little is so time consuming because my stomach could not take as much as one time - too sensitive to any type of acidic foods such as tomatoes, orange juice, spice foods, etc. I am determined to keep up my weight - just to keep it steady during treatment - I just nosh every 2 hours. I also drank supplement beverage, Boost regularly. I live on noodle kugel, matzah ball chicken soup, chicken, apple sauce and stuff like that. I could not eat fresh veggies and fruits because of risk of bacteria in them - everything has to be cooked. I tend to get "neutropenic" which means having real low blood cell counts, therefore, I have higher risk of getting infected with anything related to bacteria. But thank god, I get the Neupogen shots and my counts got up so my system become more immune. To date, I had not gotten sick except once when I only had a cold back in October. How? Maybe because I washed my hands frequently; brushed my teeth and had mouthwashes several times a day and of course, rested and stayed away from crowds of people most of the time.
Aside from all those crazy body adjustments, I do enjoy yoga when I can do even just for few minutes and get breath of fresh air even though it is cold outside. It is real good to be alive!
