5 down - 15 to go..... pick me up off the floor...

  RADIATION TIREDNESS....They told me this would happen....the feeling of complete exhaustion...and they were not kidding...whew!  The only way I know to describe it is the way you feel when you have a sinus infection and your eyes feel like they are sunk in the back of your head and you have a fever that is sucking all your energy out....but I don't have a sinus infection and I don't have a fever....

It hit me hard yesterday and I can feel it coming on again....like I can barely keep my eyes opened...and I have no wind in my sails......the feeling of tears tugging at the corners of my eyes...a feeling of being overwhelmed.  I ask the young lady who gives me my radiation treatment every morning what there is about the radiation that causes that and  she said because the radiation is killing the cells (Ugh that doesn't sound good)...your body automatically goes into fighting mode and tries to repair those cells and all the energy in your body goes toward that....so you get a headache, your shoulders ache...heck you just ache all over.  But I have the weekend off and she said by Sunday afternoon that feeling will pretty much have passed.....just in time for my Monday treatment.

I asked her yesterday if they got the tumor in the surgery and they got the margins (which were all clean) and the lymph nodes (3) were clean....what is the purpose of the radiation????  She said the only way she knew how to explain it was to say it was like insurance....just in case they missed one tiny miniscule cell that had cancerous properties.

As I said a while back I want to be a person and not a patient....so except for the occasional (and surprisingly so unlike me) afternoon nap....which I did take yesterday and can feel one coming on...I want to try to work around this tiredness...so this morning after I got back from my treatment and a little grocery shopping, I decided to go out and weed the tiny garden section between our garage and the sidewalk along side of the front of our house. I weeded it and put down new black mulch....I felt pooped while I was doing it and I'm pooped now, but I feel like I accomplished something...not only that little bit of gardening, but I didn't give in to the exhaustion.

I think we can't give in...we just can't.

That's where I am on that.....not much interesting...just trying to get through this, get done, start taking whatever med they decide to put me on and get on with my life.

So I decided to add a little something about fitness and how our words and actions can affect children. This morning I was perusing Facebook and a friend of mine posted an article that I found to be very interesting.  For all the writing I do about getting and staying fit and the importance of your health....this article made me think.  Not downplaying the importance of fitness, being healthy, losing weight and exercising, I think as adults we have to be mindful of how our words and actions affect young people around us.....how what we say and what we do can be the foundation blocks for what they grow up believing....

You may disagree with the article, but give it a read and just think about it....in this day and age of air brushing and how young girls think you have to be pencil thin to be beautiful, this article is truly compelling....

https://medium.com/human-parts/bf5111e68cc1

Have a wonderful day, a bright and happy weekend.....and for those of you who celebrate it, there's only 5 more days till Christmas!

I'll leave you with these some thoughts that sparked me today....
 
and this one......to remind myself and to remind those of you who look to me for losing weight, getting fit, being healthy motivation.....(Oh how I have to remind myself of this)