Laziness

It's been a week since my first chemotherapy treatment. And I feel fine. I've been out, I've been shopping, I've done the school run and although I have yet to make it back to the gym, I fully intend to be back there by next week. Apart from the portacath on my right arm and my silly haircut, I feel the same.

I won't deny it - the first four days after the treatment were pretty rough, as I felt tired and suffered the worst case of acid reflux. Food tasted different and the steroids made me jittery. This is to be expected as the first seven days are supposed to be the worst. My chemo nurses told me that I should listen to my body and sleep when the desire overtook me. I did make attempts to sleep, but I found it nearly impossible.

The fact is, I wonder if I lay down because of an actual feeling of fatigue or was I using chemotherapy as an excuse to have a lie-down in the middle of the day? By the fifth day, I felt back to normal, if slightly tired, but no more than I would have felt had I had a late night pre-chemo. And a lie down then would not have even crossed my mind!

It's easy to use the cancer card to get out of a lot boring and menial tasks. But I need to make sure that I don't become lazy, expecting others to do things that I'd rather not do, not because I am physically incapable of doing them, but simply because they're boring and mundane.

Another reason to avoid using the cancer card is that people will label me as ILL. Apart from this annoying little blip which I will hopefully come out of in the next seven months' or so, I am fine. I will stop writing this blog and get on with my life as a healthy person.

Then of course there's donor fatigue. There's only so much friends and family will do to help; at this point I already feel that I have relied on them too much. This is scary: I still have 15 more treatments, surgery and radiotherapy to look forward to and I will have to depend on them a lot for that.

Oh well. Better get the ironing done.