small relapse and back to school planning

well I am a little feverish again this evening, but no aches. Guess it will take a little back and forth before it's all gone. I was tired today -- not REAL tired but a little tired -- more like lazy than tired. I ignored it and took the dog for a 4 mile walk, which didn't revive me -- but I went swimming anyway. Mostly I did it because yesterday I had wanted to do more than I had time to do and had promised myself I could do it today.

I was fine while I did those things, just not real fast and furious -- which is a little unusual, but I thought..... 3/4 through the chemo, cumulative effect.....but apparently that wasn't it, because after I got home I felt a little feverish. Not THAT feverish; I had to take a hot bath to bring it up. (That's the point of fevers, right, to cook the bugs out?) It got all the way up to 100.2, then came down to 99.5, and after I had had enough heat (an hour?) I took a couple of advils.

BTW my doctor knows about this "low grade viral" thing and thinks I should be able to handle it without interrupting my chemo. My white blood count was up to 5.3 last Thursday before chemo, which is in the normal range -- towards the bottom but coming up.

SO maybe I will get some sleep out of this -- if I get to bed soon. My in laws are leaving by 10am so I can't sleep too late; I don't want to miss saying goodbye!

And then on Tuesday the kids start school. Em's at a new middle school where no one from her elementary school class will be. We met the teachers last Thursday (and I had to go to Georgetown twice to fit THAT in) and they seem very nice. They were apparently willing to come meet with us for no very big reason except to reassure us that they seem human..... I mean I asked them to meet with me on the 28th after orientation because I couldn't do the regularly scheduled meeting on the 21st, but I'm not sure they were ALL going to be at that meeting.

Matthew is going to be starting 10th grade. We have never managed him much because he has always done such a nice job managing himself. And the flip side of that is that when that's the way it usually is for years, and then problems DO arise you don't have much of a history of imposing any kind of rules, and that's hard too...... At the end of last year he started staying up too late and having trouble getting up in the morning. Over the summer we let him do the vampire thing if he wanted, because he didn't have to get up in the morning, and if ever he was going to enjoy staying up all night I figured that was the time! Now I have suggested that he start going to bed earlier so it's not such a shock next week, but how he handles that transition is up to him. What is not up to him is that I am going to make sure that screen time is over by 10pm on school nights -- I have warned him about this. I might give him a little extra on Monday night, since he starts later the first day. (They let the new freshmen have the school to themselves for the first couple of hours or so on the first day.) I sure hope Alan will help me with this...... BTW the only way to enforce the screentime OFF time is to take the computer away, which thank goodness is a laptop. This one I like to use isn't, but he doesn' t like to use the mac. I am not looking forward to it -- HE doesn't mind strife, but I do -- so this will be hard for me.

So there's a confession -- with all this cancer going on in fact my struggles are mostly of the ordinary variety......

Much better now

The body aches seem to have ended, as has the sleep orgy (sigh.....that part of it was nice!) Last time I took advil was Thursday while waiting for chemo. The aches haven't returned yet. I was relieved that it lasted only 6 days rather than the 2 weeks the doctor predicted. (I wasn't very sick -- but still I can't remember when I've last been any kind of sick for two weeks!) It's usually only 2-3 days, unless I catch it on the day of onset and make it go away before it comes -- so I'm claiming chemo inspired delays in this case.

Now if only I could figure out how to do that with cancer I'd be golden. I don't have any practice, is the thing..... Plus, Alan points out that cancer is not exactly foreign to the body - which must make it harder to recognize as a problem. Still it oughtta be possible. I used to delay my ovulation (back when I ovulated at all!) because, according to a naturopath I used to see, I didn't like PMS. I also remember making a contraction go away during Matthew's birth. I was lucky enough to have them 5 minutes apart, even at pushing time, and ONE came in only a couple of minutes, before I was ready, so I willed it away.

WOuldn't you think with that kind of history I oughtta be able to figure out how to make the cancer go away and not come back?

Actually maybe I'm sick.

Well I checked in with my doctor last night, and I think I'm going to go with the low grade viral illness guess. She (the doctor, my oncologist) said that while myalgia happens with taxol sometimes, it's generally not a cumulative effect. It's like, you get the taxol, you go home, and then you ache. And it gets better eventually and next week you go do it again and it happens again. That's not what happened to me, though.

Also Alan reminded me where I might have gotten exposed to an illness.... which was the other part of the mystery. When I went to pick him up at the airport on Friday afternoon he gave me a big kiss and told me AFTERwards that he hadn't been feeling well for a couple of days. (Duh!) I started getting body aches on Saturday. (And he's a biologist..... I guess he forgot about the breast cancer and the infection risk for a moment....?????) He's kind of under the weather too -- but it's not so obvious as when I am, because of, uh, our different personalities. And he's been thinking what he has is allergies -- since he got back. But maybe not.

Makes me grumble -- after all our hard work keeping me away from sick people ALL SUMMER! At least this time I have enough of a white count to fight it. But I don't want to feel so tired that I need to stay home and sleep in on a beautiful biking day for two weeks...... That's what Dr. L said; we won't know for sure what it is until it goes away in two weeks, or doesn't. I've never been sick for two weeks! Well I did stay home and sleep in today, and skip the bikeride. I'd gone to bed at 11pm and got up at 10:30am, with only a brief interruption to send an email about not going on the ride.

Anyway I'm on advil now -- she okayed the advil too -- so I'm going to go walk the dog. It just makes me mad -- all summer I've had so much energy despite the chemo, and been so careful to not get sick, and one screwup pulled my plug, so I'm tired all the time now. And it wasn't even MY screwup!

Myalgia?

I'm getting body aches. It's not serious, but feels like the day before onset of a viral illness. I've felt it before; I don't think I've been exposed to anything other than mosquitoes (which would be bad this year!) but I think it's not onset because it's been at this level pretty much all weekend except when I've been on advil. Advil works great -- but not sure it's a brilliant idea to take it all the time. (Have to ask the doctor about that one.) Alan did find "myalgia" listed as a possible side effect of taxol, so that's what I'm thinking is going on.

It's a rare symptom, and I'm counting my blessings, because neuropathy* is a common side effect, and so far I've been managing to avoid it. (*tingling, numbness & lack of feeling in fingers and toes.) Sometimes it lasts for months after the taxol has been discontinued. Sometimes it lasts forever and makes it hard to write and stuff. I have a feeling that keeping moving (heavy duty exercise) should help avoid it because of all the blood circulating...... so I'm doing my best with that. (Course I'm just making this up as I go along. That's what the doctors do, after all.... they're just better informed -- about SOME things.)

THIS thing I think I should be able to manage -- I think the problem is I have conditioned myself to think that when I feel this way I should take a hot bath and go to sleep for 12 hours to chase the virus away before it catches. (I don't like getting sick; usually I have been able to avoid it. Too bad all my tricks are for avoiding infectious illnesses......) So I keep thinking I need to rest....... I spoze more rest wouldn't hurt me, but yesterday it really didn't make me feel any better (which made me thing it might be my first proven taste of "chemo fatigue!") whereas advil-walking-swimming did. Today I took advil, but did a less serious walk and didn't swim, and the aches came back in the evening. Maybe I will make it a point to swim tomorrow.

I didn't swim today because we went berry picking and came home and did dinner and the pool closes earlier on Sundays so I ran out of time. I had no body aches while picking, though -- I out picked everyone else as usual and got herded off of the blackberry field and drove us home and didn't feel a THING until we got here. (Maybe I should get out more?)