Seems like monthly checkins here are about my speed these days.
I've been back at work for about a month now. It's going well overall, but I'm exhausted. It feels good to be useful, to have a reason to get up in the morning, to be engaged in things happening beyond my house.
Chemo brain continues to be an issue. Short term memory and multitasking are things I can't do well any longer. It takes me longer to process things. Outside of working I notice it when I try to read a map and navigate while Bob's driving somewhere, or calculate a tip at a restaurant. While I'm working I notice that it takes me longer to take down coherent notes in meetings. My writing has some atrocious errors in it. Missing words, homonyms and homophones used improperly (I just started typing y-o-u for used and had to fix it, for example). I get fried a little faster and need downtime, even if I'm not actually sleeping. I'll spend an hour or two with my eyes closed most days just trying to stop taking in new information while the rest of the day sorts itself out.
I think I'm probably at 80-90% of where I was before I started treatment. But then I was also probably working closer to 50 hours a week on average, and I'm definitely holding the line at 40 now. So maybe it all comes out in the wash.
I'm at the point now where I don't need to take a nap during the day as long as I don't do anything physical, but if I do, I'm hosed for the day. I've been sticking to pilates once a week and weights twice. I start PT for my knee on 8/26 and hope I'll be able to start walking and doing short hikes again soon after.
The most frustrating thing is that it's always been easiest for me to exercise first thing in the morning. Stuff always comes up throughout the day and it's just hard for me to be consistent in the afternoons, but if I work out in the morning now it feels good for an hour or two after and then I crash hard and spend the rest of the day doing a zombie imitation. If I exercise around 4pm I can be a zombie at the TV for a couple of hours and go to bed, and I wake up fully recovered the next morning.
Given everything, it's kind of a silly thing to be frustrated about, but I really want my old routine back. I do recognize that the only way to fight the fatigue long term is to exercise and get stronger, so it's my top priority. Work can slide, the house can slide, the gym can't. My hope is that I can maintain this routine by brute force until I have surgery again and that maybe I'll be far enough past chemo by the time I can resume exercise in February that I can also move back to morning workouts.
Which reminds me - reconstruction is scheduled for the week of Nov 17. I should know exactly the day in late October. 3 month recovery (assuming all goes well) means I'll be away from the gym again until mid-February.
In other news, I'm still waiting to start hormone replacement. The doctor I was referred to doesn't do HRT, and yet her staff booked me for it and made me wait 10 weeks, until two hours before my appointment, to tell me. So I'm starting over, I've got phone calls in but no appointments yet. In the meantime my GP upped the estrogen level in the birth control pills I'm taking, but I haven't seen a significant improvement yet.
Maybe I'll have better news by this time next month. :)
I've been back at work for about a month now. It's going well overall, but I'm exhausted. It feels good to be useful, to have a reason to get up in the morning, to be engaged in things happening beyond my house.
Chemo brain continues to be an issue. Short term memory and multitasking are things I can't do well any longer. It takes me longer to process things. Outside of working I notice it when I try to read a map and navigate while Bob's driving somewhere, or calculate a tip at a restaurant. While I'm working I notice that it takes me longer to take down coherent notes in meetings. My writing has some atrocious errors in it. Missing words, homonyms and homophones used improperly (I just started typing y-o-u for used and had to fix it, for example). I get fried a little faster and need downtime, even if I'm not actually sleeping. I'll spend an hour or two with my eyes closed most days just trying to stop taking in new information while the rest of the day sorts itself out.
I think I'm probably at 80-90% of where I was before I started treatment. But then I was also probably working closer to 50 hours a week on average, and I'm definitely holding the line at 40 now. So maybe it all comes out in the wash.
I'm at the point now where I don't need to take a nap during the day as long as I don't do anything physical, but if I do, I'm hosed for the day. I've been sticking to pilates once a week and weights twice. I start PT for my knee on 8/26 and hope I'll be able to start walking and doing short hikes again soon after.
The most frustrating thing is that it's always been easiest for me to exercise first thing in the morning. Stuff always comes up throughout the day and it's just hard for me to be consistent in the afternoons, but if I work out in the morning now it feels good for an hour or two after and then I crash hard and spend the rest of the day doing a zombie imitation. If I exercise around 4pm I can be a zombie at the TV for a couple of hours and go to bed, and I wake up fully recovered the next morning.
Given everything, it's kind of a silly thing to be frustrated about, but I really want my old routine back. I do recognize that the only way to fight the fatigue long term is to exercise and get stronger, so it's my top priority. Work can slide, the house can slide, the gym can't. My hope is that I can maintain this routine by brute force until I have surgery again and that maybe I'll be far enough past chemo by the time I can resume exercise in February that I can also move back to morning workouts.
Which reminds me - reconstruction is scheduled for the week of Nov 17. I should know exactly the day in late October. 3 month recovery (assuming all goes well) means I'll be away from the gym again until mid-February.
In other news, I'm still waiting to start hormone replacement. The doctor I was referred to doesn't do HRT, and yet her staff booked me for it and made me wait 10 weeks, until two hours before my appointment, to tell me. So I'm starting over, I've got phone calls in but no appointments yet. In the meantime my GP upped the estrogen level in the birth control pills I'm taking, but I haven't seen a significant improvement yet.
Maybe I'll have better news by this time next month. :)
