I’m sure at least some of you have experienced when emotions dominate common sense. When the feeling of fear is so large that your only focus becomes getting out of Dodge as fast as you can without taking time to stop and evaluate the situation in more detail. Today has been a pretty good day, so I’m now on the right track, but I’m not going to cover up that the last week has been quite hard. I’ve been running around in emotional circles in a hole of funk trying to escape the big scary chemo demon – and it has left me quite dizzy. My whole body entered fight or flight mode on Saturday morning a week ago and since then I’ve tried to figure out how to stop my head from spinning. It ended up with realizing that I had a super low blood pressure and the possible cause of that was dehydration. I have not been drinking less than normal – perhaps even more than normal – but it seems like the fluid uptake has been below par. I’ve increased the amount of fluid and I’ve been drinking more electrolytes and that sorted out the worst of the dizziness.

It’s hard to say what is causing low blood pressure and poor water uptake, but the emotional fight is definitely making me super stressed, and that can partially explain it I suppose. The level of stress I’ve experienced this week has clearly affected my body in a bad way and has set back my recovery by a lot. I did however manage to walk almost two miles today, so I’m starting to get back on track. My common sense has desperately been trying to make me see beyond the chemo demon and make little islands of hope and peace, but my emotional fear has been in full alert mode and is not quite ready to be calmed down.

The ridiculously stupid thing in all of this is that instead of aiming to have one good month from now and until the chemo starts I’ve been heading in the direction of using these potentially good weeks being afraid of the upcoming twelve weeks after that. That is not time well spent. I’m already fatigued because of the surgery and I’m getting additionally fatigued by trying to control my emotions. So as you may have figured, the last week has been tough. I have not been contributing with anything other than loud TV and an occasional panic attack. I am clinging to that I have had a good day today and I hope that I can continue down that path going forward.

In the middle of all the emotional funk I’ve had a bad allergic reaction to the glue that was used on the incision. It started as an itchy rash by the incision and developed into burning hives. The reaction has also spread throughout my body and I itch all over – even on my ears. I’ve used antihistamine pills and hydrocortisone cream, calamine and aloe gel to calm down the reaction. And not only that, the hot flashes are back with a vengeance. During each hot flash I get super sweaty and that certainly does not calm the rash down, quite the opposite. However, this morning the hives were finally less intense, so I hope it is on the backend.

The late onset neuropathy in my feet and fingers has unfortunately increased as well. It started with the big toes being tingly and numb, but now it’s in my whole foot and up the shins and also quite prominent in my fingers. It’s varying in intensity, but not getting any better. Because I’ve often these days been in the mode of just seeing how bad everything is I’m again afraid that the neuropathy will never go away –  because I’ve read that happens in some cases.

I am cherishing the good progress I’ve had today and in the week coming up I have to push myself more towards the common sense direction so I manage to get out of the funk and get back my spunk.