This is the week in which I am to be strong and free from side effects. The week in which I get to do things. I made myself that promise only yesterday.
I took a heartburn pill today. Something I have not had to do since coming home from the hospital. I feel like everything I eat is stuck in my throat. My stomach was quiet all night and most of today. I had little appetite and was scared of eating anything of substance.
I am not sure if this is a side effect of chemo or of the H1N1 vaccine. I did not get a temperature from the vaccine. The only thing that happened was a sore arm overnight. The arm is now just tender. This food thing started on Friday. Is it related to the vaccine? There is nothing in their literature that would indicate this.
I ate little. Drank the required amounts of water. Judy came over for dinner because I was not well enough to go out. She made a chicken pie which was delicious. My stomach seems to like it. It is alive finally after a day of silence.
I am disappointed. I stayed in bed all day and refused to do anything except sleep and do word searches. Read an article in Monocle magazine. Spoke with Habib briefly until the computer started acting up.
I have a beef with this computer. You can skip this paragraph if you want. I am going to rant about this thing. It is one of those Netbooks from ASUS. We elected to purchase this thing with the Solid State Drives instead of the regular drives. We bought one with a 12GB drive. It turns it shipped with 2 drives in it, a 4GB and an 8GB. That is not such a bad thing. Not great but can be managed. Except that they (ASUS) elected to put the operating system on the 4GB drive. I am now out of disk space on this thing, even though there is lots of space on the second drive. And yes, I moved anything and everything that could be redirected to the second drive. I spent all day coaxing 200MB of free space which is barely enough to make the unit usable. I will talk with Steve Lennox on Monday.
Back to my conversation with Habib. Our conversation is just warming up when Skype restarts itself stating it ran into problems with the hard drive. My video has stopped working. I reboot, restart the conversation, same thing. This is madness. Just added to the negative day.
Fetneh says I should talk to my liver on days like this to keep it calm. I did. It was not happy listening to me, I don’t think. We will talk again later.
I cleaned my room a bit. Reorganised parts of it. A lot of stuff we are not going to use daily any more can be put away, which creates more room for other stuff. Tried to keep busy and not think too much about things.
Halloween did not help. We turned off the lights, closed the blinds. I looked at the kids running around from the second floor. Sad.
This was not a good day. Judy says it was stolen from me. Tomorrow has go to be better. I am not giving it a choice.
Hi Farokh, Sorry to hear that you didn’t have a good day today. I have been thinking about you a lot in the last couple of days. You have no idea how much I want to come over for a visit, but the weekends are just packed with stuff, don’t ask me what… I just know that time truly flies.
Hey, I have been using some of your tips on how to raise a kid! They’re awesome, you should right a book! Although I have not had the opportunity to throw the little guy in the bath-tub, yet
Take care my wonderful friend and take it easy
S.
Choose your opportunities carefully! You cannot afford to waste them,
Any time you can visit will be just dandy.
hi Farokh,
am so sorry to read about the hard day yesterday, and the tough ones recently. (I keep your blog open and read it daily. so am closer than you may think…) here’s the thing: I figure you’ve got x number of miserable days and nights to go thru as you meet this illness and the treatments for it. each crappy day or night is one less you still have in front of you. this perspective helped me a lot in the early days with babies, and in later dark nights… may it support you, even a little.
sending love and big hug,
Sharon
I thought I had come to terms with the concept of miserable days. I had put aside a week for that. Yesterday was stolen from me. Due mainly to the repercussions of the H1N1 vaccine. They talk about the arm ache and temperature only in their literature. I had symptoms that smacked more of getting the virus. Came as a surprise.
Your kind words are always appreciated.
I didn’t know whether you were going to pass totally on the halloween thing or not. Since you people always made a big thing out of it, must have been tough to just watch the parade go by. We have not beenat it for quite a num,ber of years,but I can remember the first time, not answering th door was hard. Very few people on this street are involved anymore.
My computer just decided to do its own thing and got away from me. Its controling me more all the time. Anyhow, all the things going on with you are all the unknowns, and thats the tough part, but if you decided this week is yours, try and stick with this decision and and make it a good one,and keep some cool weather clothes handy.
I liked Sharon’s comment – would your guilt-free approach to sleep help as well for the non-chemo weeks? Love and a big hug, Di
Interesting, did you plan to continue this article?
Thanks
BernieR
I never know what will continue and what won’t. Some topics keep coming back. This particular one may not as it dealt with reactions to the H1N1 vaccine. But the topic of the unexpected is bound to show up again.