This journal is to organize and keep my thoughts from initial surprise (shock) of being told I have a giant mass on my left kidney, through the emotional ups and downs involved in dealing with what I'm facing today as I unwillingly become a cancer survivor.
How About Some Dark Humor?
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Should I call one? I always thought it would be neat to have a funeral *before* you die: https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/end-of-life-anaheim/death-doulas
(Note: I was drained by the happenings yesterday (Tuesday) that even though I started this entry late Tuesday, I had trouble focusing and finishing. I'm putting the final touches on this Wednesday morning). The toughest part is just not knowing. If I know I can prepare myself. But if I don't know, then I need to figure out how to appear positive on the outside while always being mentally prepared for the worst. So today, when I got some good news, it was very hard to contain myself. Yesterday I spent the day at City of Hope getting three things done - nuclear bone scan, a CT of my chest, and a CT of by abdomen and pelvis. The doc is looking for a couple things, both pretty scary: #1: Has the cancer spread? The bone scan will tell him if the cancer has mestastacized into my bones (the initial problem that my hematologist was trying to figure out was high calcium levels in my blood). Likewise, the chest CT will help the doctors determine if the cancer has spread there. #2: How b
It's been two full weeks since the operation. Time to check in to see how I'm doing versus last week's plan: Re-establish my RX regimen : Done . I'm back to my daily medication regimen. I did have an antibiotic added at my doctor's appointment last Thursday, but that's only for one week. Finish weekly grocery shopping : Done . I took Friday last week to do the weekly grocery shopping. Back on track. Wash my Car (including vacuum) : Kind of Done . I dropped by the car wash on Friday. Intent was to wash my car and vacuum the interior. The problem? The vacuums were out of order! Keeping this one in the "In Progress" category. Cook a meal : Fail. Some physical activities are still a bit challenging. In the case of cooking, standing for a period of time is tough because I can't engage my core to support my back. The result after a few minutes is a sore and tired back. I'm leaving this in the "In Progress" bucket and will try again toward
So week one is behind me and I'm still on the right side of the dirt. Being my first time at this recovery thing, I think it's going okay, but it's kind of like driving without a map. Eventually you get there (most of the time), but you don't always get to see all the sights along the way. I have in my mind what I'd like to accomplish. I need to put the "map" together. There will be two groups of activities on the map: Physical activities: These are the easy ones - getting back to the physical activities that got pushed to the side because of the surgery and recovery, and Social activities: Over the past few weeks/months, I've put a lot of activities on the backburner. Most were to avoid getting sick (even a cold would have been bad) prior to surgery. Anything related to social interaction - avoiding large groups of people (for us any family gathering is a large group of people), staying away from the grandkids (including the new one) - was basically
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