This radiation has made of me an idle and indolent feline.On days I work, I: get up early and go to treatment, commute to work, work from 9:30 to 4:30, commute home, sleep, wake up for dinner, then go to bed and readily fall back asleep, until morning.
Still a thin crust of industriousness. But the days I don't work are much more indulgent: sleep in (on Tuesdays, at least), go to treatment, come home & snack, lounge in the hot tub, curl up in the sun (radiated area carefully covered), stretch out inside for a nice long nap, rouse myself for dinner, & then once more to bed for an early night's sleep.
I can't help but feel a little uncomfortable about all the snoozing, dozing, and otherwise quite restful hours of slumber. Shouldn't I be doing something?
I'm a little past 25% of the way through the radiation now. Other than the machine breaking 2 out of the 5 days, the mask being extraordinarily tight, and the receptionist rarely arriving early enough to check me in, I guess it's going okay. So far the only real symptom besides the inescapable urge for a good deal of quality REM is a lot of soreness and aching of my lower cheeks. At first, I couldn't move my jaw to chew, or turn my head at all. And anything involving saliva production - drinking water, chewing gum, even just trying to swallow - evinced incredible pain. Although that symptom's somewhat faded the past couple of days, it's been replaced by a constant thirst. The doctor said she'd be nuking my salivary glands - they still seem to be working, but I'm thirsty nonetheless.
yawnnnnnnn
Time for a little more shut-eye.
2 comments:
Hi V,
I love the comparison to the cat sleeping in the sun! After the pace you've been keeping throughout your treatments, your body must be relishing the rest and sleep.
And yes, you ARE doing something. You're fighting and you're healing. And that is exhausting work - and the most important work of all!
This poem seems appropriate in so many ways for this thread:
The Fog, by Carl Sandberg
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
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