A Weirdly Normal Week

I'm writing this on a Friday of a weirdly normal week. I had no medical appointments this week nor did any cancer treatments cause me to feel lousy. I worked a normal 40-hour week, attending meetings, making pastoral visits, and wrestling with sermon preparation. Almost two weeks after the end of chemotherapy, I'm feeling a little bit better every day.

I went on my 4-mile running loop this morning. I still can't run the whole thing, but the sections that I jog are getting a little longer and the sections I walk a little shorter. I don't get out of breath going up the stairs. Since I am no longer severely immunocompromised, I did the grocery shopping for the family today for the first time in four months (but I do still wear a KN-95 mask). I haven't completely left the effects of chemo behind. The hair I lost won't come back for months. My fingernails and toenails turned yellow and are slowly growing back out again. But those are minor, and I'm grateful to feel the best I have for months. I'm most happy that food tastes right again and, because I don't have mouth sores, I can eat it! And I have been! I am TOTALLY enjoying every single thing I eat. I've gained back a few of the pounds I lost during chemo.

This brief window of normalcy has been so good. Radiation treatments begin next week, on Tuesday, May 3. While the side effects aren't as intense as chemotherapy, it does require daily visits to the clinic. After five weeks of radiation treatments, I'll finally have surgery to remove the tumor.

Finally, it does feel strange to have been through so many weeks of intense chemotherapy, and then for it to just be over with no obvious or visible results. Hopefully, those drugs killed a whole lot of cancer cells over those months. And hopefully the radiation will do the same.