Energy For Life Again

Getting out of the house every day to go to radiation has been energizing. My appointment is at 11:30am and most of the time, I'm done by noon. Perfect timing for doing errands or meeting a friend for lunch.

Then again, maybe it's the radiation itself that's energizing me like the energizer bunny.

It is kinda freaky to lie down and have this machine go on while everyone else scrambles out of the room. There are three different positions the machine moves into to shoot the radiation at my body. It takes about 3 minutes total. I've learned to put my mind on visualization or on anything else during that time.

The fun part is seeing those other women. I've learned that I'm lucky my tumor wasn't Her2 positive or I'd be in for yet another type of drip. I've also learned that even though I was so scared about chemo, my fear didn't cause my hospital trip. There's another woman there who she said she was as scared about chemo as I was. Still, she had no problem at all with her chemo and was able to get it every other week and every week towards the end!

My business is growing and in fact, it's the highlight of my week. So I have been missing Law & Order just because I'm rarely sitting in bed these days. Still, it's good to know when I start to feel tired, that I can sit down and just watch TV.

My exercise continues to be dancing and it's been fun. I've got a couple of dance exercise videos now. It's so nice to be able to have something I can do to get the sweat going that doesn't involve leaving the house or spending any money. Plus, I can do it any time of day I want to. It's just that the sleeves make me very hot. But I hear that eventually - maybe in another month or so - I won't need the sleeves anymore except for on a rare occasion.

So things are going better for me these days. I finally feel like the hard parts are behind me. I'm not afraid of how I look either. In fact, now when I hug people, I just get closer...tee-hee. And I think I do appear thinner. Plus, I really like just wearing undershirts. They're so comfortable.

Here's a tip for anyone who ever has to go through this: I discovered that the easiest way to stretch out my arms is to lie in bed, faced-down.

I noticed that since starting radiation, I've got sore jaw muscles on the right side. I figure it must be me grinding my teeth to just get through this last leg of the journey. My right side is holding the tension so that the left side can surrender and stay open to going through whatever it still has to go through.

So there's your update. Things are going better for me.