I feel like I just climbed Mt. Everest! No, I don't have any life changing sense of accomplishment. As I look up the stairs getting ready to climb them to go to the bathroom, much like the people on Everest, I think to myself that I don't know if I can make it or not. And much like the people on Everest, I consider just going in my pants. Just like those climbers, when I reach my goal, I am out of breath and fatigued. And finally, just like an Everest climber, I spent upwards of $30,000 to get where I am today.
Why am I comparing myself to an Everest climber? In some ways our bodies are going through the same thing right now. Altitude sickness is caused when there is less oxygen to breathe. The body reacts by eventually producing more red blood cells. During chemotherapy, your red blood cells are decreased, thereby your body is not able to absorb as much oxygen. The body reacts the same way, you have to wait for more red blood cells to be produced. I just hope that the body produces red blood cells while I sleep, because that is about all I have been able to do without getting winded (and to be honest, even that got me winded at one point today).
The thing that sucks most about this, is the cancer insomnia is still messing with me. I seem to be sleeping anytime except when people normally sleep. Yesterday, I was able to fight the urge to sleep most of the day, just taking a brief nap late morning and then again in the afternoon (hey, I am really tired, it was hard to resist sleep even that much). But last night, as I lay down, for the one and only time during the whole day, I felt wide awake. And I felt that way until 3am. I finally fell asleep, woke up early in the morning as usual to drink and pee, the back asleep until almost 11am. At this point, I am still dead tired, but I have a meeting to go to, so I start getting ready. The shower and breakfast seemed to jolt my system awake and I felt good as I start to go out to my car. Before I get out the door I hear the tornado sirens. I walk up the stairs, and start feeling tired again. I really want to go to this meeting. The news channels are all doing their best to scare the hell out of everyone, which on one hand I don't care about, but on the other hand, if I do run into this tempest that they are alluding to, I don't know that I have the energy to do anything about it. Reluctantly, I just decide to pull my Jeep into my workshop, because now they are saying they have "heard reports" of hail the size of housecats. I like how they can't say that there is hail the size of domestic felines, because everyone would know that they are just making up crap. BUT, if they say that they "heard reports" they can say any darn thing they want to, when they are still probably just making crap up. Luckily, I come back down to the house and see an e-mail stating that the meeting was being cancelled due to the impending tornado and small-mammal sized hail.
I was able to stay awake for the storm, which turned out to be a whole lot of nothing. One of our apple trees broke, but it was so full of woodpecker holes, I don't know if it was broken because of the wind from the storm or just a squirrel with a thyroid problem. As soon as the storm passed (but the all the Chicken Little reporters were still keeping up their Stormbuster 7000 Radars on TV), I fell asleep on the couch. I wake up four hours and one basenji later (I swear there wasn't a basenji laying on me when I fell asleep) and I am still dead tired! Shortly after that, I decide to do something and I played guitar until I was completely fatigued (about thirty minutes), and then I had to resign myself to collapsing on the couch again. At one point, I did muster up enough energy to get a vigorous two minute Shake Weight routine in, so I guess I will only look a third like one of those guys on the TV commercials after today's workout.
The whole rest of the night, I have felt like I am walking around with wrist weights and ankle weights on. You know those weights that people sometimes buy to get exercise, but they are so heavy the result is that they put them on and do less than they did before? The point is, I am walking around with my arms hanging down like a gorilla with a bad back. What really sucks is as tired and worn out as I am right now, I am not sleepy tired if that makes any sense. So, that is why I am writing blogs at midnight. I guess I should at least get off here and go lay in bed and stake my claim before the basenjis do.
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