It's Beginning To Feel A Lot Like Christmas

Last night Dan and Anne dropped off the Poinsettia we ordered. Between it, the Christmas lights on our house. Mom's shortbread, Mandarin oranges, and the beautiful hoar frost this morning, I've got that Christmas feeling. I would like to get some inside decorations up before Luke gets home next Thursday.

Radiation Treatment Status: 15 done. 15 to go! HALF WAY!!! That's kind of exciting for me. All of this cancer business has really gone slow for me, but the radiation part is passing relatively quickly in my mind. That's good. Thank GOD!! My boob is becoming more tender. That's to be expected. My back has the most burned feeling of all my skin so far.

I suppose it was too much to expect that quitting the Arimidex might have an effect already. Unfortunately, my joints are just as compromised as they were before. No change yet. Soon, I hope. I'm still hobbling about like a crippled person. Every now and then I get some walking momentum going and I do pretty good but I seem to pay for it all the more later when I stop moving. Moving is better than standing, though. For some reason my heels are especially vulnerable. At night, my hips are the worst. If I've been sitting for a while and start moving, it feels like my hips might give out on me, especially on stairs.

On the positive side, my spirits are up. I've been pretty miserable most of the week but can feel myself lightening up now. Perhaps the Arimidex was making me depressed. That's possible. That hadn't occurred to me until I started reading patient's comments about their Arimidex experiences on some online forums. Some people quit Arimidex for that reason alone. Hmmmm ... I've never been depressed ... not even close ... but that I've had some occasional feelings of frustration, sadness, hopelessness and misery during this whole cancer ordeal seems to me like a pretty normal response considering the circumstances. It's possible that I wouldn't immediately recognize a genuine condition of depression. Maybe that's what I was having and maybe being off the Arimidex has relieved that already. Considering that the chemo drugs can also cause depression, I think I've held up pretty well in that department.