Chemo Day #2

Today is my mom's second chemotherapy treatment.  I will be going with her and it will probably be a long day, although I found that yesterday was more stressful for me.  (Remember, on this blog we are looking at everything through endometriosis-colored glasses).  I do not expect to feel great and I certainly don't enjoy my mother having cancer.  But we're on to the second treatment and I will see how my body reacts to what will be a long day tomorrow.  I have been told that she should not have a worse time with the second treatment than the first, but who knows what will actually happen.  In the meantime, this all tires me out completely and I know she will need help at least for the 3-4 days following the procedure and that is going to be hard on my body but I got my shot, a haircut, and hopefully food in the house because I imagine it's going to be a tiring week.  I may continue to write daily, I may be a bit overwhelmed and write occasionally or I may write next week when the worst is over.  We'll see what happens.  Positive thoughts and best wishes and lots of love can never ever hurt!  (Along with perhaps an IV of coffee...)

A Night In the Life of Pain

Ahh... bedtime.  It seems to come around oh so often.  I think I would enjoy longer days and less sleeping...  But we all know that we have to sleep.  Well sleep is something that has been consistently hard since I began having endometriosis symptoms.  

At the beginning, I don't know if I would have been sleeping or not, but the pain was so bad, I basically didn't sleep normally for months.  The thing with sleep is that we try to relax and turn off our brains and let the sheep counting take us away...  Well when you have acute pain, chronic pain, post surgery pain... it is not easy to relax.  I could make it throughout the day simply by keeping myself distracted by doing about 3 mindless things at once.  But if I stopped doing those things, it didn't matter how tired I was, all I could think about was the pain.  I was uncomfortable every second before I found a doctor who could manage pain while also dealing with the endometriosis.  I have never slept with the tv on, radio on, or even been able to fall asleep to music, but I started leaving Netflix playing on my computer while I was in bed trying to sleep and I am only now getting myself able to sleep without the computer playing some television show.

Stress

So I have a list of topics I have yet to post about and I haven't been feeling well enough to write about any of them today.  It's very frustrating.  I'm feeling more pain for the past few days than I have since probably before surgery.  I haven't done anything exerting and yet there it is.  I guess I could direct you to the posts on tiredness or setbacks but I'm typing my post today because usually I would not chronicle today at all.  I was in pain so I had no desire to think about anything interesting I could write about earlier and now I am ok because I took extra pain meds but not thinking as clearly as I would like.  So normally I would just skip today, but days like these are important in understanding what my life is like still even though I would love to hide them away and deny I still have them.  Instead, I will give you a brief insight into my stream of consciousness during times like these.  

I hate to let myself admit it but today's pain makes me nervous.  It feels like pre-surgery pain...  I am hoping that I can attribute it to the overly stressful two months I've had because otherwise something might be wrong and I just do not want that at all.  I'm supposed to be gaining strength and overall health and having LESS pain, but that is not happening right now.  I was annoyed to be feeling bad while my sister was visiting because I couldn't even really sit and chat.  Small talk is the first thing to go when I feel pain.  (For my purposes, I would say that I'd been feeling "discomfort" mostly.  It's annoying and can interfere with me get my real life back, but it is way better than what I would call "pain."  For the past maybe three days I'd call it pain.) 

Lily

(Lily)

Pets.  Throughout my life, I never really had a strong appreciation for pets.  I had a guinea pig when I was young and I would pet a cat  or dog if I was at someone's house but they never invoked a strong emotional response in me.  And, to be honest, dogs often slobber and I never found that endearing. After college I ended up with a cat by pure happenstance.  A friend of mine was trying to give away a kitten and brought him over to my apartment one time, which honestly is cheating because all kittens, puppies, babies are adorable so of course I ended up with my first real pet... a cat who unfortunately, died suddenly at the age of two.  In a very strange confluence of events, I then ended up with a new kitten, already named Lily.  Lily is the cat I've had since before I was sick and she is the one who has opened me up to a whole new bond with animals since I've been sick.  

Tired

Today is one of those days... those wicked cycle days where I had a lot of pain yesterday, so I couldn't sleep, finally got to bed around 7am (yeah... that's not a typo), woke up around 12pm and now I am so tired I feel drunk.  The good news is my pain is much better.  Go figure.  I was not super surprised to not feel good yesterday... it has been a stressful couple of months and waiting for my mom's cancer diagnosis I think just put me over the top.  (See Setbacks).  It's been very important for me to get a regular night's sleep in order to feel well and I haven't had that for a week and last month was not great after my aunt passed away, so I just feel like my tiredness hit me like a ton of bricks today.