tired and cranky

I'm tired a lot now, and thirsty. I've been buying the next watermelon before i finish the one I'm on, just to make sure I don't run out. (The last one was even a seeded one, which are hard to find these days! It said it was seedless, but the markings on the outside looked like those of a seeded, so I thought maybe.) Also, I'm also getting shorter pain free windows from the advil and tylenol, and finding that trying to tough it out in between makes it much worse.

For example yesterday the 3 advils I took at 12:30 (which should have lasted 8 hours) started wearing off at 5:30. However, I waited, and didn't take tylenol until 6:15 -- and what ended up happening was that the tylenol never really worked that well at all, so I just felt more or less sick until I took advil before going to sleep, meaning it to last the night. (On the other hand, that was at 11:30pm, and the next tylenol I took, at 5am, DID work for the morning. Maybe it works a bit longer when I'm asleep.....)

I'm concerned about this because I'm only halfway through the time when I'm needing these medications -- it started about 3 weeks ago and I have 3 weeks left....assuming that the last chemo only makes me sick for a week, which I don't really know. I'm worried about the effect of all these drugs on my liver and kidneys and who knows if they are more susceptible to metastases if they are further taxed......?

The other news is, our Mac is sick. We only have a computer and a half, if you ask me -- this toshiba laptop being the half. I don't like it as much, and I don't have much access to it when the kids are home because Matthew tends to move into it. Plus, to be fair -- one laptop for a family of FOUR!? Alan should get first dibs, anyway, because he's job hunting.

Oh yeah that's the other bit of news. Alan's job funding runs out right around when I'm due to have surgery -- so he's less and less available as I am needing him more. That really sucks. I asked him to check out some stuff about the herbs he got me info on early on in treatment.... I have new questions, because I'm at a different point. (Plus it's important to check for new info...) He said I should research it myself..... but see, I really wanted it to be done by a skeptical scientist who would have a feel for what's real and what's crap. I could lose my day trying to figure that out........

I mean I understand that he's stretched and stressed, but I was really hoping to have his support at this time, which still feels to me like the prime time to be getting all the preventive stuff in..... Efforts won't work as well later if there are metastases that could somehow have been prevented.... which is what I'm after, preventing them now. (My understanding of how it is with metastases is that no matter how hard people work they are only just staying ahead of them for as long as possible -- and most people eventually run out of steam and they catch up..... Of course I would try not to be most people even then, but I would so much rather not go there!)

It's not just that ALan doesn't have time. Even more than that is the stress and negativity he brings home all the time now, which I feel is bad for me to live with and take in.. it's especially striking when I come back from a meditation workshop or something ... Of course at the same time I understand the mounting stress as we get closer to a surgery that we will have to pay for CObra to pay for..... I'm not helping on the $ front, either. My earnings, small as they were, have stopped for the moment. I just don't know that i want to schedule jobs in when I'm juggling fatigue and pain meds and might wake up one day and decide I want a nap instead of a job -- especially given that it is for only a short time now.