Un-Chemotherapy Day #5

It's un-chemotherapy day again. The every other week reckoning of symptoms, side effects and healing.

Five un-chemotherapy days = 1o weeks of un-chemotherapy = A Much Happier Kevin

Continuing side effects of treatment are almost unnoticeable some days, a lingering nag on many days and an intrusive reality on a few days.

Healing a body from the side effects of cancer treatment is less than an exact science. There are some things filed under the "we don't really know why that happens" heading. Kevin and I continue our Mad Scientist approach to much of it--trying to decide what does and doesn't impact things for better or worse on a daily basis.

The neuropathy in his hands and feet continues to be a consistent annoyance. He's adjusting to the ongoing tingle and the frustration of dropping things but is hoping to see more improvment in this area. Some of the cold sensitivity in his mouth lingers but not enough to keep him from becoming a regular at Dairy Queen's drive through window.

He gets tired easily--a really deep tired that still surprises him--but his energy level is increasing each week.

His appetite is better--ravenous is the word he uses. Most foods taste good again; some things are still undefined. A few foods don't taste like he thinks they should taste.

This may have more to do with my cooking than his tasting, but we'll just see how it plays out over the next few months.

The College, er, MiddleAge Days

I had a realization tonight.

We have hit middle age-- one of us has the AARP card to prove it--and we live like college students. Our lifestyle has regressed.

We have downsized a 4 bedroom house into a 2 bedroom apartment.

Our bikes are parked in the lving room. They are used often enough to make it too large of an effort to wheel them clear through the apartment to their niche beside the storage shed on the patio.

The placemats are folded over the back of one of the unused chairs at the dining room table. Too much trouble to wash them if someone spills, easier to wipe the table.

The tablecloth is...I don't remember where the tablecloth is. It was here when I moved in. But sometime over the months it disappeared to the laundry room and never returned.

The dishwasher is as much storage as it is utility.

There are more Pepsi cans than milk cartons in the recycling bin.

There is an unhung picture leaning on the fireplace mantel. There has been one or another leaning there for months.

I consider dusting a task to do when company is expected. Maybe. When the queen drops in for tea or something.

If I wanted to mop the floor, I would have to dust off the mop first.

We ate pizza in front of the TV tonight. Not even homemade pizza. Unbaked pizzas we hauled home in a cooler from Arni's in Lafayette and stored in the freezer for later times. Like a care package from a mom to her campus kid.

I used to keep a perfectly ordered house where dust feared to tread and there were fresh flowers on the table (from my own well maintained gardens). I imagined it would become much easier, and still very important, to do when our children were grown and the house was no longer filled with the messiness of family life.

The truth is, fresh cut flowers make me sneeze and dust only bothers me if I bother it first. I like the picture unhung, it's easy to change the scenery of my day this way. And under the tablecloth there lurked a beautiful natural wood finish on the dining table--that doesn't have to go into the washing machine to be cleaned.

The house has been traded in for an apartment and it turns out biking is highly enjoyable when you're not worried about the child wobbling in front of or behind you.
And pizza truly is better when it's eaten in front of the TV.

Granny Knew

Kevin is feeling much better tonight.

Apparently you can survive cancer and its treatments and then go on to have perfectly normal, non-life threatening, plain old everyday sniffles, sneezes and general flu-like things.

Who knew?

Other than my granny?

It's Not A Problem Until It's A Problem.

Kevin is sick. Probably a virus. Sleep last night was interrupted by the frequent demands of a miserable body and tonight he came in from work and dropped, exhausted, on the Man Couch.

He's finally resting well; I'm not sure I'll even wake him to go to bed.

Probably a virus.

But the what ifs really struck me in the wee hours today as he made yet another tired trek from the bedroom.

I made him a salad for lunch yesterday and sliced fresh tomatoes for supper. With basil from our garden. Have I poisoned his still tired immune system with the uncooked food we avoided so carefully during the months of chemotherapy?

I wonder if I need to call Dr. Skinner. Three hundred and seventy-six days ago the idea of calling an oncologist for what appears to be a virus would have seemed ludicrous. Insane. Impossible--we didn't even know any oncologists.

Now I lay awake and weigh the evidence to decide if this is a little thing or a big thing. Big Thing includes anything related to cancer. A little thing is everything else.

I wait. He's drinking plenty, he's on his feet. There's time to see what this is, what it will be.

I wonder when do things become normal again? When is long enough for a cough to be just a cough? An ache just the natural groan of an aging body and not a sign of some new symptom or side effect?

I devoted more hours to this today than I wanted. I have, however, come to a realization.

Do not, as my grandmother would remind me, borrow trouble.

It's not a problem until it's a problem.

The Bike Trail

Our August autumn continues. The days are cool for summer. The evenings are a delight. Too cool even for the usual hordes of mosquitoes on the bike trail.

Biking is working for Kevin. Less painful than walking--it eases the painful tingle on his feet and doesn't come with the tripping hazard. He can switch hands between the sometimes painful task of grasping handlebars without interrupting his ride. Sometimes the two mile trail comes easy for several passes and other days it's an effort to make it in and out once. He enjoys the effort, the success of being able to endure the effort.

Me? I can tell how he's feeling by how many times he laps me on the trail. Always at least once, usually repeatedly. I meander along. Stop to photograph a wild flower. Wait for some deer to cross the trail ahead of me. Peer over a bridge to see what's happening in the creek.

We are, always, together yet we see the view through slightly different lens.

Kevin feels like a year disappeared from his life. He is driven to reclaim what he missed. The time, the plans, the opportunities that were pushed aside by an unwelcomed interruption.

For me it was a year that lasted forever. Everything clamored for attention in a deafening roar. The moments may have slipped away under the din; the minutes I remember. Days and nights that were sometimes counted in miserably slow minutes.

I balance against a bridge while I wait for Kevin. We're somewhere in the middle of the trail. We know where we began but we can't see the end of the trail from here. This is a good place to be.

Redemption

The house phone still doesn't ring often here. But when it does ring these days I feel less of that nervous apprehension of "what now" if I see the hospital or a doctor's office popping up on the caller ID.

The cancer center called today. They were following up on Kevin's colonoscopy from last week. Wanted to know what the doctor found and how things are generally going for Kevin.

I'm pleased. This is why we came here for his treatment. This kind of follow-up and communication. This kind of care.

This one moment--the call that says 'we just want to know how things went' and I get to respond 'really well' and then I get to tell Kevin some good news from the clinic--makes up for each of those crappy calls I answered and each time I had to hit Kevin with more painful news this last year.

This is my redemption.

Zoo

We went to the zoo this morning. Banked up some of Kevin's increasing energy by having a quiet day yesterday with the intention of spending it on one big zoo-spree this morning.

It was a good time. Cool weather which invigorated the zoo residents as well as us.

Encountered some highly entertaining children and frightened their parents by talking to them. We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Cincinnati isn't like our home in Indiana where a few sentences would render us "not frightening" because the parents would likely know someone we know.

Four hours later we called it a day and came home. To further feed our inner child, we're going to have a nap now.