Energy & digestion improvements & breast cancer interpreting!

My energy is better. Not all the time -- I still get tired towards the end of the week.... but that could be from getting up at 6:30 and not getting to bed til midnightish. See but I don't really know what's normal anymore -- not even what's normal for ME. I had been getting tired towards the end of the week ever since we moved here (2003) and started getting up earlier because school starts earlier. (In SOmerville we got up at 7, I think.) Getting up in the dark most of the school year felt really different, really early, and seemed to justify extra tiredness. But now I'm not so sure -- when I was dx'd with breast cancer I was told I'd probably had it for years, maybe as many as 8 years. So stuff like getting tired by the end of the week -- was that cancer, in fact, making me tired?

And my digestion is better. I don't want to jinx myself by writing about it, but my digestion had been giving me trouble for years, progressively worse trouble. I mean beyond lactose intolerance and sugar problems -- with increasing frequency I would just get gassy for no apparent reason. Eating too fast was maybe a factor. It got to the point that eating stuff like beans and cabbage was out of the question, even though "Beano" was a regular part of my diet. Now I'm making cole slaw regularly, and it's great, and I'm fine. We had beans with dinner -- AND I had cole slaw. And I'm out of beano. This is very different.

The day I went to the doctor with my axillary lump (march '08) I also wanted her to test me for celiac disease, because I couldn't figure out what could be wrong with my digestion. It had gotten to the point that it seemed that eating gave me indigestion.

She didn't test me for anything though -- she was alarmed by the lump (and rightly so) and sent me off to take care of it, & told me we'd deal with the other stuff after we'd figured out about the lump.

But now I think maybe my digestion was just one more thing that was affected by the cancer. Maybe the cancer had diverted enough of my energy that there wasn't enough left to do a good job digesting. Interesting, huh?

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OH and I almost forgot! On Wednesday I got to to my first breast cancer interpreting job since my treatment. I was just thinking of giving back -- but it turned out that I was interpreting for this well known radiation oncologist who I'd been recommended to see -- the only one of the three who'd been recommended to me that I hadn't, in fact, seen (jsut because I found a great doctor first, and was quite sure I was going to stick with him.) Anyway that was really cool, and an honor. I kept my own history to myself during the job, but after the patient left when the doctor started talking to me while signing my form I disclosed my history, because i wanted to tell her what an honor it had been to work with her.
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BTW it's full spring now -- suddenly -- and I went on a ride with some actual babes yesterday! (as in www.babesonbikes.org. That's my biking club -- check it out.) Most of the snow has melted. I did go shovel the Custis trail 2 weeks ago...... went out and hooked up with 3 other spontaneous volunteers, 2 of whom got off their bikes, and shoveled for 4 hrs til it was passable. Then of course I was too sore to bike the next day -- it was harder than the previous shoveling (icier.)