Mid October Update (Imported from benvscancer.com 14OCT2015)

14 October 2015

Today marks one year at my job with athenahealth, but I’m not sure I can count the last two months because I’ve been working on recovering instead. Two and a half more months to go before I go back to work, but at least my radiation and chemotherapy are done.
One thing I’ve learned is that though the narcotics (Oxycodone) help with the pain, they also cause nausea. The anti-nausea medication (Zofran) they gave me does nothing for the nausea, so I just take nothing, and I can keep things down. Overall, I’ve lost 35 pounds since I started treatments at the end of August, but I’ve started gaining again. Five pounds so far this week. The last couple of weeks I’ve gone back to the Radiation Oncology department to get IV fluids because I was dehydrated. That’s better now too, and I even was able to cancel the appointment I had today for that. I’m starting to feel human again (queue Disney music) and I like it.
A lot of the weight I lost was muscle mass. My biceps are almost gone, and so are the calves I grew 20 years ago riding my bike so much. I’ve never been much into fitness, but I’ve never felt this weak before. I’m not going to ever again either. As soon as I can, I’m going to the gym and gaining weight and muscle again. I’ve gotten rid of any excess fat already now (I was 207 lbs in February, and 154 last week, so there’s my cutting cycle), and I want to gain the muscle back. I’ve had days when I walked in for an appointment, using a cane, and they took one look at me and got me a wheelchair. I didn’t protest. I’m not going to do that again.
I’m looking forward to Christmas this year, because by then I should be back on my feet, eating normally again (almost, anyway, since I will have to eat small amounts more often for the rest of my life, but normal food anyway), and having more energy. Now I’m finally getting more energy, and can sit up and watch TV or Netflix, but they’ll kick me back a few notches again with the surgery next month. At least I’m going in the right direction again. Thanks for all your support.

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