Baldies' Blog began originally in the UK by a 26 year old journalist with a blood cancer on a mission to inform the world about bone marrow donation.

He has since died, and I took on the cause of making cancer care more transparent for everybody.

Cancer is a disease that will touch everybody through diagnosis or affiliation: 1 in 2 men will be diagnosed and 1 in 3 woman will hear those words, "You Have Cancer."

I invite you to read how I feel along my journey and
how I am continuing to live a full life alongside my Hodgkin's lymphoma, with me controlling my cancer, not my cancer controlling me.

I hope that "Baldies' Blog" will prepare you to handle whatever life sends you, but especially if it's the message, "You Have Cancer."

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Sunday, February 1, 2009

It's a Hit & Run!

I feel like I got hit by a truck this morning. I really do think something crept into my room in the middle of the night and plowed me down.
I slept until 9 am, which is very uncharacteristic of me.
I’m a wake up early type of girl.
I slept like a rock, and when I woke up, I felt like a rock. I just didn’t want to move.
No problem there, except we have a standing date with Dani and the kids at 9 every Sunday.
X came running into my room to announce Danielle had called and was coming over with the kids.
Definitely a good time to get out of bed and get dressed
My sister and the fam are also at my house, and I don’t want to neglext them too long. I don’t see them enough to waste precious time.
So I woke up feeling like human lead, stuck to the bed by some unseen force (gravity?) that was holding me to the sheets.
Hopping out of bed, my feet hurt, the joints in my ankles. My shoulders and my back ached as I moved to the bathroom.
Fabulous (sarcasm), I thought. This day is going to suck. My body is telling me all ready. It’s screaming, “Get back into bed, Hillary!”
But I’m not listening, oh no I am not, I’ve got play date plans, my sister is here, I have a friend coming over that I haven’t seen in a while, X will definitely want some bonding time, and I can do all this before J and X skedaddle to some Super Bowl party that, this year, I’m completely uninterested in (my teams aren’t in it, but I may be tuning in for the commercials and the half time show).
So I shuffled my lead body straight to my oxycontin and oxycodone bottles to put my pain in it’s place, somewhere far away from me.
I need to get up. I need to move. I need to participate in life. In my experience, among all the healthy elderly (I’m talking 80+ here) the common factor has been activity. Most elderly patients with minimal health problems are active.
Once you stop moving your age, or your illness, catches up with your body, then that bad little thing wins. I won’t be allowing that to happen.
I got up and did exactly what I thought I was going to do, maybe even more, because the house has become a little cluttered. It needed to be organized, not for my sanity, but for my man’s. I did some serious organizing.
J went grocery shopping for some new foods for my new diet. I have a list of more to integrate. I’m making a lifestyle change, not just a diet change, but to make this change, to eat healthy and take supplements to improve my body’s equilibrium, it’s going to cost me.
Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching, the cash register is ringing on my behalf. I don’t know how much the V8 juice, soy milk, soy ice cream, organic eggs, organic salsa, beans, granola, etc. cost this week alongside the fruits that I am FINALLY able to slowly integrate into my body, but I can tell you I just spent $94 to refill just two of my alternative medications.
That would be the hepa trope II (for liver detox and improved function) and Quercitin C (to promote circulation with anti-bacterial qualities), and these are only two among many.
But, on the Brightside, before today I was feeling great. I do think the changes are helping.
I think the feeling is partly to blame for beginning to incorporate my X-Ray 30 C, which works not only to neutralize exposure to radiation, but also stimulates cellular metabolism and can perk up behavior and vitality, especially after anesthesia.
Can you imagine how much radiation I have had? My body is screaming getting rid of this. The same symptoms occurred the first time I integrated this into my regimen: aches, pain, fatigue, lethargy, sore throat, abdominal pain. I’m experiencing the exact same feelings I did in April 2008 when I first tried this.
I’m lucky to remember the discomfort, because I was concerned about awful side effects (such as serotonin Syndrome, very scary). Since this is not a commonly tried medication, the side-effects and interactions are unknown. I need to proceed cautiously, but even though I feel crappy, I think it’s the medication working from my previous experience.
I’ll still watch my symptoms closely, but I’m pretty sure the X-ray is at fault. My temp and vitals are normal.
Any evidence I had previously of GVH (gritty eyes mostly) has completely stopped at least. I’m psyched.
My headache did come back, remember the nasty one that accumulated into a migraine and sent me to the ER, the neurologist, and the MRI/MRA machine, but I’d erroneously thought that the feverfew I am taken had been the sole cause of it’s disappearance.
Come to find out, it is probably the combination of the feverfew and 25mg of Benadryl I take at night as prophylaxis. It’s a personally finding, but I’m excited!!
My neuropathy has eased, except in my right big toe, which like to feel like some one stabbing it with itty-bitty needles everyonce and a while.
Anyway, I’m going to rememedy this with a hot shower and some relaxation. I have been eating like a horse all day. I now think it’s time to calm down, stretch, and fall asleep.
I’ll keep you all posted on my endeavors and lifestyle changes. Keep rooting me on!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm an early riser (or of late an insomniac) too and used to feel bad when I slept in. I can't stand it when professionals say you should get up the same time every day of the week. Screw that! If your body needs sleep and your mind allows you to have it, I say enjoy every Z you can get. Glad to hear you had a nice day. Did you see the Doritos ad near the beginning of the Superbowl? Now that was a "hit and run"! Sweet dreams to you.