How I'm feeling

My parents departed today, headed back to Philly.  My Mom had been here 2 weeks, my Dad 1 week.  I had grand plans to sit outside and enjoy the returning sunshine and catch up on the blog, recap what I've been up to, maybe finally start to go through the backlog of pictures to edit, respond to emails that I've been neglecting, send out some delayed thank you's, etc.

Then reality set in.  Around noon I suddenly felt exhausted, after having had what in retrospect seems like an unusual amount of energy over the past few days.  I suppose that was the Prednisone.  So I took a much needed nap.  Which did make me feel much better, even if I missed the restorative yoga class that I was considering attending.

So by this afternoon I was feeling pretty good both physically and emotionally.  But it's now been a full week since round 2 of chemo, and I guess I should have expected that things would go a bit downhill.  It's not that bad (at least not yet), and I think I'm in a better situation to cope with it this time around, but late this afternoon I started having some stomach issues again.  And once again I'm having a bit of trouble trying to figure out if the right thing is that I need to eat or I need to hold off because I ate too much or the wrong thing.  Oh, and I'm again kind of exhausted right now.  My energy level seems to have some up and down extremes.  Kind of like my emotional levels did this past week.  Thankfully that has mostly dissipated.  And if it happens again on round 3, I think that I'll also be in a better situation to deal with that, knowing more of what to expect.  But maybe it won't -- there were some extenuating circumstances this time.

I'm also continuing to have some trouble sleeping.  I'm hoping that if I switch between a few different variety of sleeping meds, and in general only use them when needed (which I think might be mostly during week 1 of the cycle), and don't take too much, that I can keep things under control.  And if I'm kept up more often at night than I want, well maybe I'll at least get a lot of reading done.  I just finished the Hunger Games trilogy this afternoon after my nap.  I started reading it right around when I was diagnosed.  Entertaining, without being too challenging -- exactly what I needed right now.  I suppose we'll go see the movie if I can convince myself that going to a theatre full of people really isn't something I should be so worried about.

I read the trilogy on a Kindle.  Our company gave them out as bonuses to everyone over the holidays.  At first I thought it was kind of a stupid idea.  My logic was that most people probably either already owned it, or didn't want it.  I suppose in retrospect I fell somewhere else, though.  I don't think it's something I would have bought, but having used it a bit now, I do see some definite advantages.  There are still plenty of disadvantages, but I am appreciating it.  And I already have a few other Kindle books in the queue.

Sorry if this update is a little random and disorganized.  Like I said, I'm tired, but I wanted to give a bit of a heads up about how I'm doing.  It's really not as bad as perhaps the tone of this is coming across.  The pitfalls of distant written communication.  Hopefully if I pay a little bit more attention to what I eat, my stomach issues may be less this time around.  And I suspect not having come off of morphine might help as well.  We usually keep a ridiculous amount of chicken soup "on tap" in the freezer just in case someone isn't feeling well.  (And indeed we tapped into the supply a bit for my Dad when he was here.)  Our plan is to make another batch tomorrow.  We typically net a few gallons.  I'm looking forward to it.

Provided I have some windows of feeling better over the next few days, I will indeed catch up like I mentioned at the beginning of this post.