Wandering in No Man's Land

I am now just over three weeks post-radiation.  It is very nice not to have to make the daily trip to the cancer center, but at the same time I feel a little bit like a lost soul wandering around without a purpose. I am still recovering from treatment and, in fact, it will take several more weeks before I start to feel my energy returning.  Ugh.  Some days, I barely have enough energy to move from the bedroom to the couch, and I can only last about 15 minutes doing anything that requires any level of exertion (my poor garden is a mess!).  If I overdo it, bring on the nausea!  Couple with "chemo-brain", the whole situation is not what I expected and is very frustrating to say the least. The good news is that my skin is healing up nicely - I only have one "hot spot" left to heal.

This week also brought some sort of flu bug into our house, complete with nausea, diarrhea, aches, sore throat, cough, chills and fever.  When my fever spiked at 38.6, it was time to make a trip to the ER.  Some recent blood work showed that my white blood cells are still very low, thereby making me immunocompromised.  I can't take any risks as I won't be able to fight anything off in the usual fashion.  After several hours and a HUGE amount of blood taken from me, I was sent home with a follow-up appointment in a few days.  Unfortunately, one of my blood cultures (which take two days to grow in the lab) came back positive for staph bacteria.  So, we had to make another trip to the ER to have more blood drawn to ensure the issue wasn't contamination.  Don't know the outcome yet, but I should have the results by the time I go to my follow-up appointment.

And now it is time to go have another nap... zzzzzzz....



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