What’s Missing

One of the questions I’ve been asked is What do you miss? You mean besides my hair? Lol! – and actually I don’t miss my hair very much, except for the fact that it helped to keep my head warm… but I have plenty of hats to take care of that problem 🙂

I miss people! I’ve really isolated myself at home, with few outings and therefore few extended periods of human interaction (other than with my husband). He’s awesome… but I do like variety. I miss my family, my friends, my coworkers, my patients and their families. I am probably overly paranoid about getting sick, but a number of years ago a dear friend of our family died during chemo treatment due to a respiratory infection that her weakened immune system just couldn’t fight. So there you have it. I’m being very cautious about protecting myself from germs.

I miss eating out. My care team recommends avoiding eating out (you never know who is really washing their hands)… especially fast food – so again, avoiding germs, we rarely eat out. Kevin has brought home pizza sometimes (I figure it’s cooked and hot, so not likely to carry many germs home with it). Lately I’ve been craving KFC… when my counts get back up to normal after chemo that’s one of the first things I’m eating!

I miss driving long distances! I love being on the road with a good audiobook, and going to see my family or my friends. But driving long distances can be tiring, and since I’m already tired it would probably be too much for me. This means I haven’t been to the west side of the Cascades since December, haven’t seen my parents since then. I haven’t been to Wenatchee, or to TriCities, or to Tacoma, or Seattle to see my work buddies.

I miss boot camp and my friends at boot camp. I don’t miss burpees, and push ups, and frog jumps, and bootstrappers, and… I could go on… and seriously I don’t love exercising, but I DO love how I feel after I’ve exercised, and I do love my boot camp buddies. I also miss that knowledge that if I want to do something physical, I can. I suspect I’ve lost some muscle mass, and it’s going to take a gradual increase in activity to get back to where I was before all this started. On the other hand, I think one of the reasons things have gone so well for me is that I was in good shape last fall.

Health update: I’m doing really well these days. I didn’t have any fever at all this last week. Mostly now I’m dealing with a little heartburn (but the Omeprazole helps), and itchy hands and feet from a bit of a Taxol rash (but the Benadryl cream really helps with that), and relatively mild fatigue towards the end of each week. This is waaaaay better than during the Adriamycin/Cytoxan chemo cycles. 5 more treatments to go!

Thank goodness we finally have spring weather – because I was really missing going outside! Now I can go for a walk around the block. It’s so nice! Next weekend I am going to Leavenworth to scrapbook with my friends (this is about the 15th year that we’ve been doing this). Kevin worries that I’ll overdo and tire myself out too much. So my SIL, Kathy, is in charge of making sure that I rest while I’m there. I worry a bit about germs, but we aren’t crammed together, and everyone is so good about wanting to take care of me that I’m sure I’ll be fine. Here’s a lovely picture of Leavenworth in the spring so you can see why I must go…

The view from our Bed & Breakfast (Haus Rohrbach) – spectacular!