I have now finished 19 days of treatment and I am at the end of week 4. Having that 1 day break on the Thursday has done wonders for fatigue as it seems to be much better and more manageable today. I think that the point of the weekends off is to help out with recovery and it works well. By Monday I was ready to go again. I am curious if anyone did a Mon/Tue, rest Wed and then Thu/Fri schedule and see what the effects are. From a patient point of view it would extend treatment by an extra week, but the impact of it seems to be beneficial. I feel less tired today then I did last weekend. It could also be that this weekend I am not doing much as we have. I hockey games and just practices that I do not attend. But energy levels seem to be sufficient as do my meals. For dinner we are having a relatively simple meal with food we have in the house. I forgot to take on one of my nausea pills today, but it seems to be ok. Last night in the evening I had a bit of a burning sensation in my esophagus, it was similar to what I had the first time I went through radiation but it seems to be ok.
Today was supposed to be a nice relaxing day where we did nothing. This morning we realized that the dishwasher had not run last night and when we tried to run it this morning we got an error. We tried numerous things and we eventually pulled it out and noticed that the junction box was blackened and all burned inside. So now we are in the process of fixing that. Mel managed to get the dishwasher pulled out on her own and I noticed the blackening and Mel’s father is going to swap it out. It is not difficult to do and I had actually done it when we had swapped our original dishwasher. We tend to use the dishwasher quite a bit so it is critical for us to have it functional. With the holidays today is only Saturday but it feels like Sunday and that we have had a long week so far. This week we will be traveling to Ottawa for a hockey tournament so we will see what my energy levels will be like.
Yesterday with all of the snow I tried to shovel a bit and I do not have much core strength and it puts pressure on my abdomen and strains it a bit. I am not sure if it is due to the surgery or the sunburn from the radiation. Pushing the snow was fine, but lifting it was not pleasant. Luckily we have 3 others that can shovel, even though we only have 2 shovels. We have setup the area for weights and I will start to lift some weights when I am done my treatment. Small weights to try and build some muscle. Xavier is starting to teach Mel how to lift some weights and he wants to put her on a program. Xavier lifts weights and make it seem so easy. He is young and has been doing it for the last couple of years.
Previously I did not want to work out as I could not increase my food intake enough to accommodate for the caloric expenditure. This time I will start to work out and try and figure it out so that I can build some more muscle mass and not whittle away. Perhaps by exercising it will increase my metabolism and I will want to eat more. If not then this is an opportunity to get my body fat below 3%. I realized that since I did not take any pills for nausea today, it gets a bit worse as the night progresses. At the moment I can feel a bit of nausea starting. It is subtle and starts in my upper chest with the sensation that I want to vomit, but not really. It is a bit of a discomfort. I can take a pill now but it seems like a waste so late in the day. I have been sipping on lemon tea for the last 90 minutes so that may contribute to it a bit. Chances are that once I do decide what I want to eat then I may take one. I was in the mood for some English muffins, but we do not have any in the house and most of the recipes I know will take a couple of hours at least. I am going to prep the dough tonight and make some first thing in the morning. Mel thinks it is a bit random. We use to make spaghetti sauce and midnight from scratch all of the time and then have a quick spaghetti dinner. Her mom thought we were crazy. I am just going back to my roots. I have some fond memories of going out to eat late at night with my parents at Chinese restaurants in Toronto. I do not know why we went, but i remember walking to the restaurant in the dark during the summer. Home made food is far superior to premade and sits much better.
Mach