Cancer is very weird. It messes with your head. And one of the things that it messes with is the feeling of guilt. I may have wrote a bit about this before, but sometimes I feel guilty (for lack of a better word) about how I am dealing with this all.
I had a bit tougher time this cycle with the #chemotherapy, but it is starting to pass.
I know I was a bit "out of it" for a couple of days. I know it is frustrating as I am going through those moments. I know there are times I feel like crying and just want to sleep to make the feeling stop. It is not that I am sad, that I think I am dying, that I think about how bad the treatment is. No, it is some kind of "chemo brain" alteration that I can maybe push through. Just easier to sleep an hour or so and I wake up fine.
I know that I am mildly nauseous and need to pop some pills a couple of times during the initial fews days. And I know I am tired, sometimes sleeping 16 hours almost non-stop if I do not feel too much like "fighting" the tired days.
I missed two days of training this week, though I did manage an hour on the treadmill while on the chemo pump. The day after I was hooked up. Yesterday was a bad day - I did not feel great. I was trying to do a 40 minute run. I could not do it, I made about .9 miles in 10 minutes. I tried walking a bit. Then tried running again. Too cold I guess and my lungs were not working. Finally went on treadmill. Got my 40 minutes in. Really slow.
And today, after a 15 hour nap, got a 5K in on the treadmill. I am going out to dinner with my family shortly. Sure I feel tired, but I can do it.
Yet I see people in the same situation who cannot do these things. And I feel guilty that I am physically able to still do this. Or are focusing too much on the down side. I saw a post on a cancer board today with someone who was doing that and is generally in the same situation - chemo for life. Perhaps I am naive. I know, as of now, that I will be on chemo for the rest of my life. I know, as of now, that the chemo is not working 100% yet with some tumors growing (though there are positive signs, hoping for a good scan down the road). And that even if the chemo works, eventually it stops working. If I thought of all that, all the time, it would make this all almost impossible to deal with.
I do think of those things once in awhile. And in the middle of the worst part of the chemo treatment of the first few days, including this weird twilight where you feel like you are awake and asleep at the same time (this new stuff gives me serious chemo brain the first few days :) ) it can bring you down.
But I sit here a couple of hours now as I feel the last vestiges of the more negative aspects of the last treatment slip away and smiling as I finally have a bit of an appetite for the first time in awhile and looking forward for dinner.
I am starting to feel like I am going to start sounding like a cliche, but trying to keep a good attitude and breaking the negative thoughts really helps. Plus some exercise of course :)
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