Great Week

I have slept the last 4 nights.  This is a HUGE accomplishment.

My daughter said, "I feel like I have learned something today! I'm not waiting on other students to finish their work before I learn some more!" This was our first day of homeschooling.  She looked very happy.  I haven't seen her smile like that in months.  I felt like I had a purpose today.

I had normal energy this past week.  Wow....I feel good.  Especially with sleep!

Sleep? What is sleep?

Let's talk about sleep or the lack there of.  When you go through chemo, your body is all jacked up.  Steroids the doctors give you keep you up so I was given Adavan to help me sleep.  2 at night.  Every night.  After my last week of chemo, Doc told me to stay on the Adavan because the chemo resides in your system for up to 10 days and therefore, I might have trouble sleeping.  I tried at various times to NOT take it and sleep without it-didn't work.  The steroids just keep you wired.  With chemo you also feel like you need to sleep at weird times (not at night), so I would catch a nap, daily.

Then with surgery, I had pain killers prescribed, which I hated to take but they were necessary.  They confused my body.  Made me sleepy but I didn't actually sleep.  Adavan helped.  I was down to one at night.  I stopped taking pain killers about a week and half after surgery (a radiation doctor kind of set me back on recovery progress when he started poking around on my incision and put me back in the pain zone) Now, I am down to nothing at night and no pain killers for about a week or so.  I am also breaking my habit of napping during the day.  I'm actually just laying down for about 15-30 min and not sleeping.  This is a huge habit to break.  This week, my goal is to not lie down at all, except on Sunday:)   The bigger problem is I can not remember a time when a full night's sleep happened.

Radiation is about to start-I am worried about the fatigue factor.  I would like my energy to increase not decrease.  It has been great to have a little more energy each day lately.

I guess I am wondering when do I go back to normal where sleep is concerned.  I would like to just turn off the lights and go to sleep each night.

Rough Day

This Sunday I really wanted to be off pain killers post surgery.  I missed seeing my kids.  Pain killers confuse me. They make me sleepy but I can't sleep.  Make me want to curl up on my bed away from people, but make me lonely. I can't focus on them and Joe has to really be in charge.  The kids are kind of on auto pilot.  Which I don't like.  I can still hear them on LOUD auto pilot.  (They are being really good but when mom is down...the mice like to play.)  So I decided I didn't need them.  Well, apparently the 4 incisions on my body laughed at me and decided otherwise.  About 1 p.m I was a crying mess.

Being in pain also draws out other stuff that is bothering you like worrying secretly about the pathology report that is still outstanding and an unknown.  If you know me you know I like to be in control.  Cancer =in control of NOTHING.  This is probably why I have been crying today more than just over being in some pain.  I would like to hear the two words "clear margins" so we can move on to the third phase of this mess.  Radiation.

So today was a rough day but tomorrow will be better I am sure.  Joe goes back to work and the kids go back to school.