Digging in the Hot Sun

In which our Heroine searches for her Verve. 

I woke up tired today and stayed that way.  I thought I was done with this nonsense.  I haven’t had a hard day like this since February (when I was battling a terrible cold while traveling through four western states).  Today, even my nap didn’t refresh.  It is so demoralizing to wake up twice within the same day and feel so very weary each time.  I found myself facing a whole day of zombie-dom.  What to do, what to do?

The idiotic part of my brain decided that the best thing would be to go dig things up in the back yard for a few hours under the pretense that the bright sun would jolt the exhaustion right out of me.  The digging part was probably a bad idea, but it is nice to feel like I’ve scored a little against a few hundred of the little chickweed seedlings, which are actually thriving much better than my future vegetable garden, by the way.  I managed to find some flagstones hidden beneath a thin layer of chickweed and I determined to dig them out and slide them on top of the verdant chickweed.  Small progress—it may take me a week to finish this particular job.  I did have some good fun shearing back my lilac bushes with my new titanium-tipped (or something) shears.  Man, those things can really slice.  There’s nothing like wielding a bit of dangerous equipment for putting the verve right back into a person.    

The Brain that Changes Itself

In which our Heroine—dum, da, dum—reads. 

Every so often I get really tired.  I don’t think its just the Keppra.  Yesterday was one of those days.  I can’t figure it out.  Why these periodic bouts of severe exhaustion?  And of course, every time I have one of those days, I consequently find myself forgetting how healthy I really am and feeling a bit sorry for myself.  I believe the exact word for how I feel is beleaguered—conjuring up a sense of overly heavy drama.

Fortunately, I picked up a book from the library entitled The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, M.D. that has served to push back against my incredible ingratitude and put things in perspective.  Out of the 400 pages or so of “stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science” I have read exactly 4.  They document the story of a woman’s brain cancer, surgery, and then recovery.  Her story was eerily familiar to my own, except that her “miraculous” recovery is nothing compared to mine. 

Nicole was 33.  Her tumor was a glioma—the worst kind (as opposed to my much better type).  She was told she had 3-9 months to live.  It was pronounced inoperable and that her only hope of staying alive was to have the most intense doses of radiation, the most a human being can tolerate.  But forget the radiation, the steroids to prevent brain swelling were of such high dosage that she could have died from those alone.  Since her tumor was on the left side of her brain, she had severe speech problems.  Like me, she found herself paralyzed on one side of her body—though not the left, but the right (and yes, she is right-handed)—because of a side effect of the radiation.  When she speaks of not being able to turn or move in bed because of the partial paralysis, I remember how it feels.  But from there the story differs drastically from my own.  She lost her hair and gained not a meager ten pounds like me, but 65 from the inactivity and the steroids.  She became depressed.  (Yeah, no kidding). 

After about 3 years of this paralysis, Nicole was admitted into a specialized clinic.  For 2 weeks she was forced to do strange things, like wear an oven mitt on her left hand in an effort to force her to use the right.  She would be stationed in front of play dough and relearn how to use a fork.  She learned how to button her own shirts again.  Her brain changed.  It regrew itself, relearned how to do things on the right side.  Nicole regained confidence in her abilities and a positive attitude.  She got a job again (just in time to help cover 9/11 at CNN New York) and moved out of her parent’s house.  She is known for her wimpy hand-shake, but she gives it gladly anyway. 

Wow, my cancerous life is awesome compared to hers.  I have happily been able to stay home and use regular physical therapy to regain functions of my body that I lost for what—a whole 2-3 weeks, in comparison to her 3 years—such a time period I can’t even imagine living through in those cirumstances. 

I can’t quite recommend a book of which I’ve only read four pages, but as I flip through it and feel the gentle swoosh of the pages underneath my finger tips, I feel a sense of promise.  I’ll let you know.  I will say that it has already done some good, if only because it has reminded me to be positive and grateful on a tired day.

An Exhausted Apology: Woe is Me!

In which our Lady says Sorry—and means It!

One of the most frustrating things about this illness is how tired I am.  I had been dealing with the exhaustion for a long time before diagnosis, but of course it is much worse now.   I admit that when I found out that I was to enter a new period of my life where everyone competed to take care of me, that I thought, “Maybe now I’ll get to do a few art projects.”  You would think having a permanent nurse-maid and nanny situation would allow a little for this.  However, it only took my first attempt at painting a picture as part of my new creative therapy plan to douse my creative flames.  I found I had just enough energy to paint in some blue sky and a green sward into my uninspired landscape.  When I told my brother Bryce this, he described it as being like another moment of grieving.  Exactly.  The reality of my exhaustion does cause me grief.  If I actually thought I was terminal, I’d be really mad.  Who wants to spend their remaining days feeling too tired to do anything?

So, I felt tired yesterday and did not post.  Sorry.  So much for my goal of at least one blog post a day.  I have enough to say, just not enough energy to do it with.  I doubt many of you can imagine what it is like to be so tired all the time.  It is NOT like just having a baby and the healing it takes afterward.  Right now, I have no special hormones running through my system giving me spurts of energy and health.  Childbirth is natural, cancer is not.  As it is, my blog seems to be my only creative outlet.  I console myself that this internet lifestyle is acceptable because someday I will use all this writing in my personal history.   (Wouldn’t you like to know more about my patriarchal blessing now?  But let’s face it the really interesting thing about patriarchal blessings is the secretive nature of the things.)