It's been so long since I blogged that I had to think THINK about how to open the program. Hm. That should tell me something. Maybe just that it's been a long time.
So here we are at the end of The Cancer Treatment Phase. K. only has ONE more radiation treatment, on Monday, and that's it. Unfortunately, that means he is really quite sick and miserable, because radiation is cumulative and even continues to act on the body for a few weeks after the treatments end (just like a sunburn continues to burn you after you go in the house...)
So now we start another phase, which I am calling Early Recovery. This (I imagine, but may be proven wrong) will be the part where he still feels like crap on toast but is not actually getting any WORSE. Estimate is 2 weeks on this, but everything I have been told or assumed has turned out different than I thought, so I'm hanging loose on it. Rather than continuing with a steady diet of Ensure and other canned-sugar delights in the g-tube, I am working on blenderized meals for him with a variety of fresh veggies and fruits. So far, so good.
And then, at some point, then we get to Full Blown Recovery. Which is where I shall encourage him to (insist that he)
- exercise (just by walking around the house right now...it's still over 100 every day and he'd collapse if he stepped outside)
- continue to enjoy blenderized treats,
- start back to looking at his work a little at a time (because I'm ready to stop looking at it so much)
- and start working toward eating and drinking by mouth.
Who knows when this will happen? I have to say it's a little daunting, because in The Treatment Phase, we knew (mostly) how many and when. In the other phases, we don't really know a damn thing. Just that every day you have to get up and walk through that one day.
Sounds like a lesson we've learned before, right? That's what cancer seems to be good for: lessons we've already learned but clearly haven't gotten right yet.
Here's another one, that I'll recommend to you. Every day, when I wake up, I give thanks for my body. It is not sick and it works together in a miraculous way. My legs work, my arms work. My brain chemistry is whack, so I take meds for that, and darn glad to have them. I can deal with that. So, if I don't have to go in for chemotherapy or radiation or some other kind of heinous assault on my marvellous God-given physical plant that day, I will be giving thanks and rejoicing!
