Yep that's right - recovery isn't happening as quickly as I thought it would. Actually, its not bad if I stick to a light routine of going to bed at 10:00pm (getting about 10 hours of sleep each night), going to the gym and appointments (acupuncture, massage, check ups) and throw in a lunch or two with Preety or friends from work and I'm good. If I throw in a late night or an afternoon of gardening in the sun, I'm done the next day - or worse - it actually makes me feel sick - basically like a hangover but without the fun drinking part with headache, nausea and fatigue. It reminds me of having chemo unfortunately.
I've tested out this theory a few times to be sure. I felt it after returning home from the cottage on the May long weekend. I went to my sister's for a 5-day visit which included a visit with the university gals in Guelph (it was a late night of sober chatting - no kidding) and by the afternoon the next day I wasn't feeling well and felt really gross the following morning after that. And just this past weekend we were at Ann and Mike's for game night (we left at 11:30 pm) and the next day I slept until almost 11:00 am (I could've sworn when I woke up it wasn't any later than 8:00 am before looking at the clock).
In addition to the fatigue, I have been suffering the effects of chemo brain - even though chemo was 6 months ago - now I know what they were talking about. My cognitive abilities are decreased and seem to become apparent when I do things that take some concentration (like playing board games believe it or not) and I struggle for words sometimes or completely mix up words, like say garage sale instead of grocery store. The weirdest example I can give was when we were at the cottage and we were lying in bed in the morning and May was whining. Instead of me saying "May!" (in a firm tone) I said "Cher!". Dom asked 'who's Cher?' I had no idea - and no I wasn't thinking of Cher or had dreamt of her the night before. In fact, I cannot think of the last time I heard a song by Cher or saw a picture of her but obviously somewhere in the depths of my brain she was there. Remember this outfit?
All in all, this has made me feel like a bit of an old lady and will surely solidify my nickname of Nanny Knight by my friends here in Ottawa. But I guess this is all part of recovery - recognizing that I am still working on it - and after 8 months of chemo, surgery and radiation, I am not Wonder Woman and can't just jump right back into regular life. Keep in mind, I haven't even started back to work yet - so obviously I've got a ways to go in that department.
Okay new topic - my visit to Ingersoll. It was a bitter sweet one because as some of you know Narissa and Drew's dog Jett died the night before I arrived. So it was initially a sad visit but at least I was able to distract Sam and Devin for a few days. Jett was a great dog and such a permanent member of the Ferguson family that I frequently forgot that he was no longer around and felt very sad when I realized my blunder. There are few dogs in the world who were as gentle as Jett was - a gentle giant for sure - the only dog that truly put up with my nasty little dog Olive. This is my favourite picture of Lola and Jett, they were pals.
While at home I got to have a good, long chat with an old friend Heather Mackenzie, saw my two friends Laurel and April, visited with the real Nanny Knight, the university gals and Becky and Bailey for an afternoon.
This past weekend April was in town for a horse show so Dom and I went to Carp and hung out at the fairgrounds for the afternoon. It was a relaxing day. This is April and her horse Leo.
Dom and I also went to a FIFA soccer game on the weekend - we're going to a few more games in the next two weeks. Man, its good soccer - those chicks are really good! So far, I have to admit I like it better than the Fury games...
I also started my group therapy, finally. I've had two sessions and so far its good. The group is pretty varied in age and in stages of recovery - it ranges from a few months since treatment ended (me) to almost five years after treatment has ended - but we've all had some sort of breast cancer so we've got that in common. Basically we work through a topic every week so its pretty structured which is good - I like that - structure, that is.
So in my last post I promised that I would go through the principles that I took from the book Radical Remission as my way of tackling my cancer. The book was a collection of research of people who went into remission by using a variety of different techniques (some of it including conventional treatment) and the principles are basically the 'top ten' things that came up out of this research.
As you will probably recall, the first principle was Radically Changing Your Diet - where I ranted a lot about sugar. The second principle is:
Taking Control of Your Health
For me this meant that I needed to make sure I was getting the most out of my treatment as possible which was a holistic approach to treatment and making sure that even though the cancer centre didn't offer this and Dr. Dent never even came close to talking about it, it was important to me to be in charge of my own treatment - hence taking charge of my health. That's how I came to having acupuncture, going to massage and taking supplements and being on a special diet (ketogenic) while in treatment. Lucky for me, I am good at project management and since I wasn't working I didn't really have any project to manage except my cancer. As a side note, this wasn't the only book that I read that suggested that taking control of your health is key to cancer treatment - that was basically in every book I read on the subject. It doesn't mean that I had to read a tonne of medical journal articles (which I did) or a pile of books about cancer (which I did) but it did mean that I didn't limit myself to only conventional cancer treatment and go with my instinct.
My oncologists are experts in conventional cancer treatment but they aren't experts in nutrition, supplements, different techniques to make chemo more effective (like fasting and ketogenic diets), acupuncture and massage. Ask any dietitian about getting advice from your doctor on nutrition and they'll cringe because doctors are not experts in nutrition (I've got a few friends who are dietitians so trust me, I know their reaction). A good example of this is when I was visiting Nan we went grocery shopping and she said that her doctor told her that she needed to eat a banana a day because she needed potassium. I told Nan that there are a lot of other foods that are higher in potassium like avocado, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yogurt, leafy green vegetables etc. When we got home from the grocery store, we figured out that Nan was getting more than enough potassium from all of these foods compared to the banana that her doctor recommended.
The next principle is:
Following your intuition
I touched on this a bit in the last few paragraphs but I think this is key for anyone facing any sort of disease or challenge in their lives. Going with your gut is super important. When you get cancer a lot of people give you a lot of advice - some good, some bad, some ridiculous. And when you see your doctor its really important to follow your instinct. For me, it was to have chemo before surgery - I thought that was the right approach - its a scary one because that means that you live for what seems like a long time, with this tumour that you know is cancer, rather than having the satisfaction of having it removed right away. I also knew that it was important for me to see Dr. Craig, Tran and Meagan (massage therapist) even though my oncologist didn't seem to even acknowledge what I was doing. This could scare off a lot of people - especially if you doctors advise against complementary therapies - but for me I knew it was important and didn't really care that Dr. Dent didn't want to hear about it. I'm not sure if its a generational thing or if its because my Mom was a medical secretary so I know that doctors are human and don't know everything about everything but it was my instinct to seek advice from a number of different professionals, read a lot about my cancer and then make my own decisions on things.
The next principle is:
Taking Herbs and Supplements
I relied on Dr. Craig's expertise to provide me with supplements through my treatment (I continue to take some although not nearly as many as I used to). I think this made a huge difference during my treatment and also for my overall health. There are so many different types of supplements that I took - some of the most popular being ECGC (the element in green tea thats anti-cancer), Indo-carbinol-3 which is found in brocolli sprouts which is thought to inhibit cancer growth, melatonin (cancer rates in people who do shift work are higher and it is thought that this has to do with a disruption/lack of melatonin) and vitamin C (there's lots of research on the effects of vitamin C and your immune system). And there are so many herbs that you can eat that are so beneficial to your overall health and that fight cancer. The top one of all time is tumeric - this is a huge anti-inflammatory and it is theorized that the dominance of tumeric in Indian food is the reason for low cancer rates in India. Cinnamon is another one that's a great anti-inflammatory and also stabilizes your blood sugar (so you aren't releasing too much insulin which contains IGF-1 which feeds cancer cells). Garlic and ginger are two other foods - I guess they aren't herbs really - just roots but they are great anti-inflammatory foods and have cancer fighting elements to them. Anyway, the idea with this principle is that you should supplement your cancer treatment with these types of things to help the fight. In many cases oncologists might not know about the benefits of supplements and herbs so that's where Dr. Craig's expertise came in handy. For example, when I was getting Taxol - the one type of chemo - I was having joint pain which is a common side effect - but Dr. Craig noticed that I deficient in magnesium - and guess what? A magnesium deficiency causes joint pain. So I took a supplement and this side effect disappeared.
The next few principles are more touchy-feely ones so I'll save that for my next post. I did want to leave you with a video that I just watched today. Its a good explanation of what I worry about and what I'm sure a lot of people worry about after their cancer treatment is over - because for us who have/had cancer, its never really over. Even though my tumour is gone and treatment is done my oncologist hasn't declared me cancer-free - I'm not even sure if they ever will or if someday they will say I'm in remission - I never take off that little cancer backpack. This is a tear-jerker of a video and I think is applicable to anyone who has had or has cancer and I couldn't have said it any better. Grab a tissue.
Metastatic Breast Cancer
