Originally published 2/5/13
I was going to say "its funny, you know" but on second thoughts its not funny. I find I have good days and bad days, days when i feel positive and days when I don't.
Today has been more of the latter for some reason. I have felt tired, worn down, my shoulders and neck ache and I spent most of the morning half asleep in bed. This is not like me normally, but today something just told me to take it slow and easy. I didn't even go out for a walk, I did do the morning and afternoon school run though. Standing there in the play ground feeling incredibly self conscious quietly hoping no one would come and talk to me.
I think that's what I feel most conscious about, how my speech has changed, I don't sound like me anymore - well not in my own head anyway - I avoid making phone calls and I find I try to avoid talking to people. Intellectually I find this quite interesting, simply because I find changes to my mood change this quite alot. The other day I had quite along chat with the pharmacist about what had been done, the operation and what is happening next.
This afternoon I got called by the oncology people from the hospital to see if I was alright and if I had questions or anything I wanted to talk about. To my surprise I actually found myself asking a lot of questions and voicing my worries and fears about the radio and chemotherapy. I can't honestly say I feel happy about it now, or that I'm not worried about it. I can say that I feel more prepared, less anxious about it. I think I feel better about the treatment in that I now know its a perfectly average course of treatment that they have done many, many times before and that they have massive experience in dealing with the side effects. I also now know that I am not going to go back to day one after the operation, my mouth will not feel that bad again and I won't suddenly start choking on my own saliva again.
Nonetheless I have not felt as positive or happy today as I did yesterday. I felt better when my wife came home though, I also felt better after I had managed to talk all this through with her.
I expect I will feel better tomorrow, I tend to do that - up one day and down the next. That's just me, hell I did it before I had cancer, doing it when in do have cancer is to be expected. After making a wonderful smoothie at lunchtime today (banana, Greek yogurt, milk, walnuts, strawberries and peanut butter) I reckon I'm gonna have more energy tomorrow :-)
