Overwhelming Fatigue
As anyone would expect, after months of cancer treatment, Sheila is exhausted. To make the expected exhaustion from treatment worse, we've had at least two busy, absolutely hectic days each week since her radiation treatment ended... Thanksgiving, Liza's wedding out of town, Christmas dinner with friends, a few days in Manhattan, Christmas, and our New Year's Eve anniversary celebration with some friends (our 10th anniversary, actually). It has been an exceptionally busy month.
After months of cancer treatment and then an exceptionally busy month socially, it comes as no surprise that Sheila is so exhausted that, at times, she needs to be off her feet because she feels as though she doesn't have the strength to keep her body upright. She is definitely overwhelmingly fatigued.
Unfortunately, I'm not fairing much better. We're quite the pair right now.
My health has been barely balancing on the side of stability over the past six months as we managed Sheila's cancer diagnosis and treatment. I've lacked the strength for much of anything other than what we must do... cooking meals, showers, laundry, emergency home repairs, and getting to and from the hospital everyday.
Throughout Sheila's cancer treatment, I've been in a strict energy management mode. I conserve energy whenever possible in order to be ready for anything life and Sheila's illness could throw at me. I'm in an energy management mode all the time anyway due to my health but, during this period, all my energy was conserved to use for our daily visits to the hospital, cooking everyday, and whatever other little things life threw at us. If we had nothing to do, I did nothing but rest.
There have been weekly problems with my own health (at least once each week) but I've kept quiet about it. Besides... I really didn't have the energy to write about it anyway. I've done so little writing that I am very far behind in keeping this blog up to date. I haven't written about my own health, nor about our busy holiday schedule, nor about Sheila's recovery, nor about much of anything. I've been too exhausted to even sit here at the computer nevermind try to put a bunch of thoughts together cohesively.
I still want to write about all these events over the past couple of months but, as far as my own health is concerned, I'm not even going to attempt to catch up in writing about my own health over the past few months. I'll pick up from yesterday though...
We were playing Life Junior with the grandchildren yesterday (hopefully, I'll write more about that in another blog post... I have some good photos to share) and I started to feel as though I was getting dizzy. I grabbed my drink in the hope that it would help me a little bit... I drank it down and waited a short while... unfortunately, it didn't help at all. The dizziness was getting worse.
Within a few minutes, my eyesight was getting gray and white... I was graying-out... it was like I had white, fuzzy balls in the center of my vision... I could no longer see Sheila and the kids... then my vision started to get sparkly... I needed to retrieve my emergency medications and get busy with the epinephrine before I lost consciousness.
After some epinephrine and some other extra medications, I laid on the couch and put my feet up. I remained feeling quite lousy throughout much of the day. Breathing was difficult. I was still struggling with dizziness and lightheadedness throughout the remainder of the day. As is usual after this little cellular struggle within my own body, I was overwhelmingly fatigued... again.
Over the course of the day, I spent some time sick in the bathroom... I've had far worse times but it was bad enough to mention here before I forget about it. Later in the evening, I jumped into more powerful drugs to help stabilize my body. These more powerful drugs bring on grogginess and drowsiness but my health does feel more "stable". I could use the sleep caused by these drugs anyway so I suppose it is a good thing all around. On the positive side, I slept well last night!
I have a few other little health issues happening right now but we'll see how that plays out before I write about it. I need to recover from yesterday's little anaphylaxic episode so that is the priority for now.
Now I'm heading to the couch...
After months of cancer treatment and then an exceptionally busy month socially, it comes as no surprise that Sheila is so exhausted that, at times, she needs to be off her feet because she feels as though she doesn't have the strength to keep her body upright. She is definitely overwhelmingly fatigued.
Unfortunately, I'm not fairing much better. We're quite the pair right now.
My health has been barely balancing on the side of stability over the past six months as we managed Sheila's cancer diagnosis and treatment. I've lacked the strength for much of anything other than what we must do... cooking meals, showers, laundry, emergency home repairs, and getting to and from the hospital everyday.
Throughout Sheila's cancer treatment, I've been in a strict energy management mode. I conserve energy whenever possible in order to be ready for anything life and Sheila's illness could throw at me. I'm in an energy management mode all the time anyway due to my health but, during this period, all my energy was conserved to use for our daily visits to the hospital, cooking everyday, and whatever other little things life threw at us. If we had nothing to do, I did nothing but rest.
There have been weekly problems with my own health (at least once each week) but I've kept quiet about it. Besides... I really didn't have the energy to write about it anyway. I've done so little writing that I am very far behind in keeping this blog up to date. I haven't written about my own health, nor about our busy holiday schedule, nor about Sheila's recovery, nor about much of anything. I've been too exhausted to even sit here at the computer nevermind try to put a bunch of thoughts together cohesively.
I still want to write about all these events over the past couple of months but, as far as my own health is concerned, I'm not even going to attempt to catch up in writing about my own health over the past few months. I'll pick up from yesterday though...
We were playing Life Junior with the grandchildren yesterday (hopefully, I'll write more about that in another blog post... I have some good photos to share) and I started to feel as though I was getting dizzy. I grabbed my drink in the hope that it would help me a little bit... I drank it down and waited a short while... unfortunately, it didn't help at all. The dizziness was getting worse.
Within a few minutes, my eyesight was getting gray and white... I was graying-out... it was like I had white, fuzzy balls in the center of my vision... I could no longer see Sheila and the kids... then my vision started to get sparkly... I needed to retrieve my emergency medications and get busy with the epinephrine before I lost consciousness.
After some epinephrine and some other extra medications, I laid on the couch and put my feet up. I remained feeling quite lousy throughout much of the day. Breathing was difficult. I was still struggling with dizziness and lightheadedness throughout the remainder of the day. As is usual after this little cellular struggle within my own body, I was overwhelmingly fatigued... again.
Over the course of the day, I spent some time sick in the bathroom... I've had far worse times but it was bad enough to mention here before I forget about it. Later in the evening, I jumped into more powerful drugs to help stabilize my body. These more powerful drugs bring on grogginess and drowsiness but my health does feel more "stable". I could use the sleep caused by these drugs anyway so I suppose it is a good thing all around. On the positive side, I slept well last night!
I have a few other little health issues happening right now but we'll see how that plays out before I write about it. I need to recover from yesterday's little anaphylaxic episode so that is the priority for now.
Now I'm heading to the couch...
Comments
Post a Comment