Digestive issues have been improving over the past few days. Not perfect, but I'm feeling much more functional, and I'm able to eat a lot more freely than I was a few days ago. Maybe I can even start putting some weight on, although that hasn't yet materialized.
But now I'm worrying that I'm going from just having a little bit of trouble falling asleep to more serious insomnia. Two nights ago it wasn't just trouble falling asleep -- I also woke up in the middle of the night and then had a lot of trouble getting back to sleep. So I'm feeling in general a lot more tired during the day. Late this morning we basically had a family nap -- Lorien and I both slept some while Dylan napped. It was awesome. Maybe it's a little weird to think about some daytime sleep being one of the highlights of my day, but hey, I'll take what I can get.
Perhaps this is the routine that I'll be settling into. A week of feeling good, a week of feeling bad, a week of feeling okay? Repeat for 6 months. (Ignoring for a moment the radiation that's going to follow, which for some reason scares the hell out of me more than the chemo, but think there might not be a rational basis for that. I'm not sure, I still have to make an appointment with the radiation doctor, and I don't yet know the details.)
I met with my oncologist today, and he assures me that everything looks great as far as my blood tests go. And that if what I describe to him as my feelings and side effects are as bad as it gets for me, that I should consider myself very lucky.
So I probably should just do my best to enjoy life when I'm feeling good, and deal with it and lay low when I'm feeling not so good. And things really were going pretty good before, which I now think is probably mostly from the Prednisone. Last Wednesday in particular was just a really wonderful day. Becca and Mikey were visiting from Portland with their son Ollie; the weather was beautiful; we had a wonderful picnic lunch (from Slow) at Totland, which was especially great because I had been a little wary of restaurant food where there might be more unknowns; we hung out at our house for a while and the kids played; and then, emboldened by the lunch experience, we had a pleasant walk to and from the weekly food truck gathering of Off The Grid in North Berkeley for dinner. Not exactly an elaborate night on the town, but for a brief moment everything felt normal. Maybe even better than normal, since I didn't have to work. :) Being able to enjoy meals out was I think a big part of it. As much as I kind of hate the word, I guess I am a bit of a foodie, and having eating directly leading to discomfort and having to be so careful about what I eat for so much of the past many months has been a huge downer.
And maybe next time I want to blog about a really good day, I should do it before I have a bad day.
Time to go to sleep. Or at least try.
5 comments:
It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us. -- Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)
Good food and good friends makes for a splendid day.
What did you get from Slow???
-erin
We had the braised beef sandwich, and the pulled pork sandwich. It was the first time we had eaten from there. Tasty.
Ambien CR (continuous release) worked well for me when I got into the pattern where: falling asleep was ok, but once I got up at 2am to pee, I could never get back to sleep. Not that I advocate sleeping pills under *normal* circumstances....
re: Ambien
I'm thankful I got it to work once. But noting that it took twice the usual dose. I don't want to push my luck, so I'm going to reserve its use for times when I either need to get up and be somewhere somewhat early, or when I need to be sure that I get a good enough night's sleep to be sufficiently not tired the next day.
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