I’ve gained back too much weight to be ignored so I’ve given ye olde Pro Club some more money and will start seeing a trainer 3x a week for the next 10 weeks or so, starting next week or the week after, depending on schedules.
So that’s good. It will be good to turn the ship back around and start heading back down to fighting weight.
Over the past year I’ve gained back a bit of the weight I lost during the previous year. About a quarter of it. So that’s dissappointing, but on the whole I’m still way ahead.
So I’ve started running and playing tennis and generally trying to get back to it. Next step is to stop he insanity with my eating and get back on the stick. I’m also probably going to hire a trainer for at least once a week. They’re so freaking expensive, but it will do wonders to guarantee that I’m getting into the gym.
So that’s it. Pants are getting a bit tight, which isn’t cool (but I guess makes sense. If 80 pounds was 12 inches, a quarter of that would probably be about 3).
My inflation adjusted weight goal is now 170 lbs (my previous min was 175). I’m currently back up to 195.
In other news, my health is doing ok. This past week I was sick with a lingering cold. I’ve still got the tail end of it as I write ths, in fact.
I’m supposed to go in for my 3 month post treatment scan soon. I called the doctors a couple weeks ago to schedule it and they said they’d call me back, but they haven’t yet. I guess I should ring them again and see what the deal is.
My weight has increased slightly over the last few months. I need to draw the line here and get back on top of that. I haven’t exercised for some time now and my diet’s been a bit out of whack.
Personal life is going very well. Thanks for your concern.
Night Watch and V For Vendetta are both good movies. I think the comic for V was better than the movie and Night Watch had some slightly annoying cinematography, but what can you do?
I can’t help but notice that I never said much about the actual side effects of radiation. So here goes: they were pretty bad, but could have been worse.
I had a tremendous sore throat for about 3 weeks which is just almost gone. It’s been hanging in there pretty well for the last week. I think I also got a bit sick at the end of radiation, becuase I gave a cold to a friend. I feel bad for passing it on, but I didn’t really notice I was ill since the radiation sore throat masked the sick sore throat. I only realized it when I started coughing non-stop and got a stuffy nose.
Anyway, the sore throat made it excruciatingly painful to swallow without chewing the daylights out of even the softest of foodstuffs. One really does get more pleasure out of eating and eat less if one chews more. I’ll try to carry this habit into my normal life.
I also lost my voice for about two weeks. That was pretty frustrating, but I borrowed Heather’s magnadoodle for writing notes and whistle for alerting people to my jotted pearls of wisdom. At other times, I carted my laptop around and did my best Stephen Hawking impression.
The craziest side effect was that all my hair in the path of the beam fell out, basically one day. Poof! Out it went in the shower. It just couldn’t take it anymore.
The results of last Friday’s (extremely unpleasant) PET scan came in today: all clear, no evidence of disease. This was the expected result, so everything proceeds according to plan. I should contact the radiation oncologist and start radiation treatment in a few weeks after Ed’s not wedding.
This past Friday was hopefully my last dose of chemo. It was the 6th total dose and the end of my 3rd cycle. So now I’ll get a PET scan next Friday and, assuming the results say I show no cancer, I’ll stop chemo and move on to radiaiton for 4-8 weeks starting mid November. If the PET shows I do still have cancer, which, by all accounts is extremely unlikely, it’s back to the chemo drawing board. Got to get ‘er done before sealing the deal with rads.
Each time at chemo definitely gets harder. I have a ton of anticipatory nausea these days (that is, a Pavlovian response just to going into the place or thinking about the therapy that makes me want to throw up). It was great having Heather with me there yesterday to take my mind off of things. Would have been much harder alone. This morning, so far, though, so good. I have head and stomach aches, but much of that just means I haven’t had anything to eat or drink yet today.
As for weekend plans, I intende to watch all of season 1 of Lost.
Today was my 5th chemo infusion. Everything went relatively well. They found lots of good veins, but had trouble penetrating my steelskin, so they ended up trying 4 times before they finally got something to work. They were really pretty upset about the whole thing and profusely apologetic. Only one of the attempts really hurt. On that one they managed to penetrate the skin, but not the vein.
It really is embarrasing when I forget to toggle off my invulnerability powers.
Anyway, that’s down. So now I’ll feel like crap for a few days and it’s back at ’em.
My dad’s in town for this round, so that’s nice. We’ve had some nice meals. And he got a chance to meet a couple more of my friends: Heather tonight and Geeven and Ali tomorrow when he comes with me into the U district for my usual gyro/bubble tea/comic book excursion.
After that, it’s off to look at some more condos with Lyn. I wonder if the one I didn’t buy has sold yet. I’m starting to have a bit of regret (not financially, though) about it. I looked at rental places today at Harbor Steps. Summary: Crap!!
Bleh. Well, this weekend is the last scheduled visitor for a while. The next thing I know I have to do out of town is Ed’s pseudo-wedding on Nov. 12th or so, so that’ll be good to have some time to just settle down for a bit.