Tuesday, January 13, 2009

The long road ahead...

Phew! I've been overwhelmed and extremely busy since starting back to school. I've had 2 trainings (one online and the other was for 2 full days), 3 parent meetings (ARD's), and my teacher of the year portfolio was due. Lots of paperwork. Hopefully after this week things will calm down and I'll be able to think again...

Even though I'm done with treatments, and have been for a month now, I've still got a lot of work cut out for me. I'm still not caught up on my sleeping...I guess catching up on 6 months lack of sleep will take longer than the 2 weeks I was anticipating. My nightmares have not totally gone away...they still creep up more often than not.

Matt and I started walking again last week. Boy...what a blow to my self-esteem. Before chemo, I was able to walk a long time-at a fast pace-and didn't tire easily. I am my mother's daughter. She's the queen of speed walking. My job kept me in pretty good shape as well. I could run the hallway after kids and still not be out of breath. Don't believe me? You should check out the video of me chasing a kid around the whole school. Yeah...caught by school cameras. Funny thing is...he wasn't even in my class! Unfortunately, that's not been so lately. Chemo took it's toll on my body, especially my lungs (thanks, bleo).

The first night of walking (Thursday) I was already out of breath before we hit the end of the street. My heart was racing and I was panting. Seriously. Total walk time=5 minutes. Walked again Friday night, skipped the weekend, started again yesterday. I'm walking every night. Already we've gone farther and longer. Each time I progress a little more. My goal is to be able to walk down the hallways at school without getting winded. I believe that working full-time helped me to not deteriorate as much as I could have. I still remained active throughout treatment. I gained minimal weight (due to steriods) and it kept my lungs and heart working almost up to par.

My next appointment is February 11th with my radiation oncologist. I'll post more about it then. Also, I posted some more tattoo pics. Mainly just the final tattoo pics.

For now, I have a friend going into surgery tomorrow to correct her scoliosis. I know she'll pull through without skipping a beat! Good luck, Megan!!

Thanks for reading and goodnight, folks!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I AM the queen of speed walking....can't help myself. I have places to go, people to see and things to do!
Love you
Mom

Anonymous said...

Hell, you'll be chasing those little munchkins in no time!

Megs said...

It's good to keep walking and doing things that may not feel the same as they did before your HL journey began. Eventually, you'll be back to where you were physically, and a whole lot better off emotionally/mentally/spiritually because of everything else you've been through & conquered.

Thank you so much for your warm thoughts and words. I never really understood what an impact people's prayers and warm wishes can have until now. I am now a firm believer. I know you of all people understand this.

So happy to have you in my life!

xoxo