Another Kick At The Can

I laughed when I saw this. It's the picture that would have gone with my post yesterday!

Today, I'm happy to say that I do feel calm. I feel better than yesterday. I didn't sleep so well last night again but I didn't try to get up early and I let myself sleep as long as I needed, which was until about 10:45. For this past week or so, it seems that my best sleep starts around 6:00 or 7:00 a.m. Anyway, sleeping as long as necessary may have made the difference today.

While I'm not "on top of the world" today, I do feel generally better and less upset. I'm less achy and my stomach isn't upset today, though it was in the night for a bit.

It's no wonder I feel despairing sometimes when I thought that I would be feeling steady improvement once I got through chemo and then radiation. Nobody warned me that there might possibly be nasty side effect issues caused by the drugs I'm to take afterward. I knew there were potential side effects but so do tylenol and cough syrup have potential side effects. I didn't know that there was likely to be quality-of-life compromising side effects. I wasn't expecting this and then to have it continue longer than even my oncologists thought it would has been disheartening. It makes it much harder to move forward and it certainly slows my progress. A lot.

Getting ready for work, getting in and out of vehicles, walking to the office, dealing with snowy and icy surfaces ... and then repeating the process to go home are the most tiring things about work, I think. I might have to see about going in to work every second day instead of every day.

I think I did remarkably well walking outside with Otto while I was wearing Luke's old sorels (giant winter boots), which are at least two sizes too big. They allowed me a little more stability on uneven surfaces. And they're so heavy, I mostly shuffled instead of lifting my feet. It was more like snow-shoeing. I also had to shuffle because the boot laces were missing and I could easily step right out of them. Where are the laces? I think they've been repurposed as shooting strings in a lacrosse stick somewhere.

In my own shoes and boots, I've fallen 5 times in the snow already just getting to and from the car. I haven't slipped on ice and I haven't really hurt myself except for rehurting my shoulder, which happens just as easily sometimes just dressing myself. Sometimes all it takes is to step into snow and over I go. I think the numbness in my feet really impacts my stability on uneven surfaces and I'm sure the joint problems don't help. So even a short walk to the car comes with it's problems. I might have to resort to wearing Luke's sorels to work to make it across the parking lot and down the sidewalk to work. I know I felt very vulnerable walking back and forth on Tuesday.

Anyway, wish me luck today. I'm going in this afternoon. I might be the only one in our office, though, according to Nora. Most of my colleagues took part or all of this week off.

I think I'll wear Luke's boots today.