Its Friday night after my first week back at work. Going in to it, I was very concerned about interacting with the other engineers at work. Before treatment, and the fine tuning of my medication, I was having frequent losses of cognitive ability. My sister Jean suggested to one of the doctors that these might be small seizures and increased my medication. The doctor increased my Keppra anti-seizure prescription to 3000mg/day, but I then was sticking my head in a huge microwave oven (Radiation treatment) and taking toxic drugs (Chemotherapy) for 6 weeks. I hope you can understand why I did not have high expectations.
On top of this, I am not one that sticks my toe in the pool. I just jump right in. In this spirit, and in an effort to gain some independence and get more exercise, I started taking the bus to work. Its a mile and a half walk from the house to the bus stop, then a half mile from the opposing bus stop to work. So round trip its a 3 mile walk. I did not make it all week, Holly gave me a ride one day when it was raining, and I asked her to pick me up early one day when I was not feeling well.
Monday and Tuesday went great. Wednesday did not go as well, I got a strange feeling while eating lunch and became exhausted. I asked Holly to come pick me up and took a nap when I got home. I put in a full day Thursday with Holly giving me a ride to and fro. Back to the bus today, and was able to put in a full day, but had to take a nappy time when I got home.
Other than being tired, I was able to do my job. No cognitive lapses, no seizures. I was able to come up to speed on all the projects and start investigating issues. This was very encouraging to me.
In all this I have started to realize what 'fighting cancer' means. I technically do not have cancer, but am going through cancer treatment. There is an incredible urge to curl up in a ball in bed because I do not feel good. On top of the urge to hide under to covers is a built in excuse to do so. The urge to crawl under a rock is what I am fighting. Getting back into my routine is making me realize that I have lower limits to what I can do in a day. Accepting and pushing these limits will be my next challenge.
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