These past few weeks have been interesting. While my energy is returning, I realize how my body is working extremely hard to recover. I write this post so any of my cancer friends understand we do not become what we once were overnight. There are no magic buttons we can push that say, "return to normal." How I wish!
I am noticing gradual transformations. One is that my skin is smoothing out. It is not as dry and chapped as when chemicals were infiltrating my body. The red spots on my arms and legs are thankfully disappearing. They were scary, like I was being taken over by some invisible being. Now I love rubbing my hands together because they are so soft and smooth from the natural oils that are helping my health return.
My complexion has more color again. Friends are commenting on how I am not so white and translucent. It feels good to hear, "You have color in your cheeks again." Makes me smile. Warms my soul. I am again going to be the human I once was.
Even though I continue to wear my cancer cap, my hair is getting fuzzy on my scalp. I laugh and tell folks that I am currently a cross between a baby and my 98 year old father with hair sticking up in every direction possible. I pet my head! The clinic tells me I won't really like my hair until November. I live in hope. Still, my eyebrows and eyelashes return as does hair on other body parts. Kind of like puberty all over again. Sorry...TMI!
While all this is happening, my insides are straightening themselves out. My kidneys and I handled an extremely uncomfortable UTI a few weeks ago. That levelled me (my first UTI ever) but was handled with the help of a friend, an excellent urgent care center in Batavia, and meds that worked wonders.
Meanwhile, I have had two appointments with the radiologist. Last time, they fitted me to what they have happily nicknamed a 'bubble wrap silhouette'. It is a form in which I will lay every time I get a radiation treatment. In conjunction with a variety of pre-placed 'tattoos' on my body, it means I am positioned the same way every time and that helps the radiation process. My radiation will happen every Monday through Friday during July at 8:10 a.m.
Do I wonder about the radiation? You bet. I'm not so worried about side effects as I am about the long lasting affects the radiation will have. The doctor so easily recites his monologue about how the radiation process transpires and how it is the last step in my cancer process. But I wonder, what does it really do to my body? How will I be different afterwards and for years to come?
So, my cancer friends, know that life continues to move us forward. We do chemotherapy. We manage surgery. We struggle with the side effects. We gradually find ourselves coming around to a world with more energy and hair and appetite and returning body functions. We handle radiation.
The best part is that with God as our guide, we are coming around, and hopefully, prayerfully, we look to the good years ahead, without cancer. We know we fought the good fight; and forever we hold close to us a continuing peace that carries us into whatever the future holds.
Signed, The quilting cancer girl in recovery and radiation
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