The two days
immediately following my chemo session were actually very good. The three days
of steroids I took before and after my chemo gave me a false energy burst, I
felt like I could take on the world.
The downside
of this was my sleeping pattern was extremely disturbed and I was constantly
hungry... I was finding that I was wakening at 3am and making tea and toast to
settle my hunger. It didn’t get to the stage of McDonalds at 3am but nearly! More
frustrating was the difficulty I had getting to sleep.
However, by
the third day post chemo this all changed significantly.
My
energy levels nose-dived.
I have never experienced fatigue like it. It’s
difficult to explain how debilitated I felt. I was so exhausted…all I could do was go to
bed and get what sleep I could. However even with a long sleep I didn’t feel
rested or re-energised.
In
addition to the fatigue I began to experience joint pains in my ankles, they
felt like a crushing pain. As though my feet and ankles had been run over by a car…nice
eh!
Craig had to
regularly massage my ankles and the balls of my feet to provide some relief, I also
took some co-codamol to help me get to sleep as the joint pains were keeping me
awake and I was desperate for sleep.
After
several nights of bad sleep I finally managed to sleep from about 8pm until 10am.
However, I still felt an underlying tiredness.
Simple
things you normally don’t even think about needed more time and preparation.
Even having a shower felt draining. Rather than energising and I needed time
after it to rest before I could even think about getting dressed.
The major
issue I had with this was accepting how frustrating it is.
I know that
I should be able to do simple things like make dinner or have a shower without
having to rest. These activities shouldn’t have needed me to think about them,
they should just happen as a minor part of my day. Instead, having a shower or
walking up the stairs were major events in my day. I have found that sitting
down intermittently when waiting for the kettle to boil helps conserve some of
my energy. By planning and allocating sufficient time to rest between getting
showered and dressed means I can avoid becoming exhausted too quickly.
I found that
I needed to accept that the days following chemo my energy levels will be
really poor, and that I will need to ask for help and have rests to manage the
tiredness.
The asking
for help I still struggle with….Luckily my family know what I am like and were
great about offering assistance which made it somewhat easier for me to accept.
In case you’re
experiencing similar symptoms as you are reading this, there were a number of additional
factors that helped me manage the fatigue and lethargy. I found a combination of rest, sleep, regular
meals, fluid and pacing activities. I made sure I still had some fun every day –
this acted as a distraction for me and also boosted my mood.
Fortunately
after the joint pains and exhaustion began to subside I started to pick up. It
wasn’t a case of springing back to normal. It was a day by day gradual
improvement. The joint pains finally began to settle and I began to feel less
fatigued. I gradually started back to work, a little at first and built this up
by small amounts each day.
Small steps.
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