Physical therapy is kicking my butt. I thought I was past the painful part of having a Frozen Shoulder. Now I have the privilege and dubious joy of immense pain every night. I’m getting between 2 to 3 hours of sleep. Then my arm throbs in pain enough to wake me up.
Since I avoid pain medications due to the ill effects on my liver, all I can do is suffer. My physical therapist stated this is normal and usually patients take Tylenol or something similar.
Hopefully this is a short time thing, but until I get past this time of pain, posting will be sporadic yet again.
Got a call from the imaging center today. Apparently, for this upcoming scan, I have to get a shot of radiation dosage. They get these dosages from Texas and Texas can’t get it to Florida in time for my scan on Wednesday. Where o’ where is Smokey and the Bandit?
Everything has now been rescheduled back one week. Scan next Wednesday and then the following Wednesday a visit with my doctors at Terk.
Fighting cancer is rough on the body, but having gone through this, I think that the blows to my mental and emotional health is even worse. It’s the not knowing what is going on that creates doubt, uncertainty, fear and paranoia. I was all set for the scan this week and finding out next week what is going on with my cancer. Now I have to wait yet another week. It’s this drawn out process that is wearing on the soul. At times, I want to throw up my hands and say, “The hell with all of this.”
I get depressed a lot which is not good. My doctors are always asking if I’m feeling depressed. I flat out lie to them and say, “Nope.” I know if I admit even feeling just a tiny bit of depression, they’ll put me on some more drugs that are going to screw me up even more. I know I just have to keep gutting it out and eventually the finish line will hopefully appear. I hope it is damn soon as I’m not sure how much more I can endure.
The one good news is that Saturday night I slept 8 straight hours without getting up. Last night I slept 6 straight hours and probably would have slept longer if my alarm hadn’t gone off at 4 am. I’m going to try to go to bed an hour early tonight and see if I can get 7 straight hours of sleep. Before this weekend, I never got more than 3 or 4 hours of sleep before I woke up. Sometimes, I could get back to sleep for a couple more hours, but not always. This has been going on for nine months now. Mrs. D marvels that I’ve been able to continue working a physical job with so little sleep.
Long term sleep deprivation is no joke. Maybe I’ve turned a corner and can finally get some decent sleep.
Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com
I set the bar low on writing goals last week, so low you could clear it with high heels. Sadly I couldn’t clear the bar. I have a theory on why I’m struggling lately with writing goals. It’s pretty long, so I’ll do a separate post later this morning on it. It should also change the way I’m doing things, so I hope that I’ll be a bit more creative and be able to write more.
My short story “The Curse” was rejected for the third time. I have a list of six Sci-Fi magazines that I had planned on submitting this story too, but I can’t find the damn list. I’ll work on finding the list today and get the story submitted to the next one on the list. If by some chance, all six reject it, I may go through another round of beta reading. Not sure if I want to do that or not. I may just shelve it for now.
As far as writing goals for this week, other than posting every day, I’ll wait and set my goals after my next post.
In Health news, I am on track now for a new diagnosis. The MRI I got on Wednesday looked good, but the Dr. wants to compare it to prior MRI’s. That should happen this week as I’m dropping off a CD of all my MRI’s from MD Anderson to him tomorrow.
I got to say, it was a world of difference going to get this MRI. Previous ones were at MD Anderson. The one I got Wednesday was a Precision Imaging. A business dedicated to doing scans. The waiting room was opulent and quite full. Comfortable couches and chairs that were roomy. Even the changing rooms were nice, kind of like at an upscale clothing store. The MRI only took about 20 minutes to complete instead of the hour and a half that it normally takes. I was much impressed.
No appointments this week as of yet. I do have a consult with a urologist on the following week. We’ll see how that goes.
I’m tired. Really tired. My stamina is super low right now. This is to be expected as I’m at the tail end of my three month Lupron shot. It happens every time. I’m sleeping about 5 1/2 hours a night right now. I should be getting between 6 and 7 hours, but my body won’t let me sleep that long right now. As I get closer to the end of this cycle, my sleep will get less and less and that definitely contributes to how tired I am.
I deliberately set my writing goals for the past week low as I knew it would be a long week of working. I didn’t set it low enough as it was an absolute brutal work week. Thursday through Saturday I worked almost a full 40 hours in just three days. This on top of doing three straight 11 hour days Monday through Wednesday.
I didn’t post everyday and I didn’t write a story nor complete the weekly writing challenge on time. Never fear, I do plan on getting it posted today and hopefully will get back on track on posting the weekly challenge every Saturday.
My goals this week for writing is to get back to posting daily. Other than that, any writing I do will be a bonus. I need this week to recover from last week.
I’m sure that everybody is tired of me going on and on about inventory as I realize that most people shy away from it or have little interest in it. No more writing about inventory for at least a year.
My body is hurting today all over. It’s going to take a while to recover. It’s been a huge blow to my work ethic pride this week. Previously, I could run rings around the guys who are half my age. Now sadly, that is not the case. It’s going to take a while to get used to the new normal of working.
This week I’m only working four days as I’m off on Friday. I have two appointments on that day. The first is with a new doctor to me. This will be my second opinion on my prostrate cancer. Hopefully we will get clearer answers on what exactly is going on with my battle with cancer. Then I go back to MD Anderson in the afternoon to meet with the radiation oncologist. I really like him as he is open and clear about what is happening. He answers my questions fully and doesn’t hem and haw like the surgical oncologist did.
My sleep is all screwed up at this point. Between having to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I can’t sleep more than six hours a night. Plus it doesn’t help that Gracie, my dog, knows how to tell time and will whine and bark at me if I don’t get up after six hours of sleep. Last night I specifically told her I would be sleeping in today and not to wake me up. Lo and behold, I got eight hours of sleep last night. I did have to get up twice to urinate so it wasn’t a full eight hours, but longer than I usually get. Gracie is a smart girl.
My diet sucked the last few days as I ate whatever what brought in to work. Carbs, sweets and generally not good things for me were eaten without a thought. This week I’ll do my best to eat right and not cheat.
Till next week, time and tide wait for no man.
You don’t need a WordPress account to comment. Write your comment in the box below or click on the caption icon to the right of the title above. Ignore requests for a name/ username and press post or save. Your comment will be posted anonymously. Please follow me though, to receive notification of new posts.
Writing with Cancer 