After that appointment, surprisingly, my arm felt a little better! In fact, everything from surgery is feeling a whole lot better. In my last post, I talked about the fact that recovery seemed to stall every few days. I would feel better for a couple of days, only to relapse back into terrible pain that would shoot from up under my arms around to my shoulder blades. It was awful, and I wasn't sure it was ever going to end!
For the past week, though, something has changed. I'm still sore and my chest is tight, but the excruciating pain appears to have ceased! My PT friend, Kim, said that when she worked on my arm last week, it seemed that perhaps scar tissue was beginning to form under my arm from the surgery, thus creating adhesions that needed to be broken. I'm not sure if they were able to do some of that when they were manipulating my arm on the radiation table, or if I'm finally just really starting to heal, but I feel SO much better :)
It's been a REALLY busy week around here, but I'm grateful to be doing more (and in less pain when I'm doing it!). Much of normal life has started to resume, and it's exhausting at this point! I'm doing as much as I can and giving myself grace when I just can't go anymore. And, with radiation starting tomorrow, that grace will have to continue.
From what I've been told, radiation is easy compared to chemo; but as the treatments progress, fatigue becomes much stronger. It's also a daily treatment (M-F) for 5 weeks. Since the facility is about 25 minutes away, it will likely be a noticeable interruption in our day during that time period. However, the appointments will be short, and I'm going to try to do them early in the day so that it doesn't conflict too much with our daily activities. As with everything else in the cancer bag, we'll adjust and learn the "new normal."
Thank you so much for your continual prayers. If you could pray that radiation would begin smoothly tomorrow, that I'd be able to lift my arm enough (and not be in too much pain doing so), and that God would protect me and care for me during this next stage of treatment, that would be wonderful. The goal of radiation in my case is to provide one last blast at the areas that were not affected by surgery (my chest wall, clavicle lymph nodes, and mammary lymph nodes). They are going after anything at the microscopic level that may have been left behind after surgery and chemo. Hopefully, that's nothing at this point, but it will give us reassurance that we've played all of our cards in order to fight this cancer.
The kids and I have been enjoying the first hints of fall for the past couple of weeks, and we've been quoting a very familiar Bible verse pretty frequently...
"This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it" (Psalm 118:24)
Such a simple verse, but it's become quite profound around here. When we see the blue sky and feel the warm sun shining down, we all can't help but feel so grateful for the gift of a day. Our instructions are to "rejoice" and "be glad in it", so we're trying to do that whenever we can. We made homemade applesauce yesterday morning, and Hailey commented how good it was to see me doing some of these things again. It will feel so good to be back to full strength again soon!!
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| The "fruit" of our labor from apple picking :) |
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| Lunch at one of our favorite parks! The weather has been spectacular! |
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| Well, maybe not on this day! It rained through A.J.'s entire football game on Saturday. The kids thought it was awesome. We went with it :) |
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| Be still, my heart. This cutie snuck into bed with us and was still sleeping when I woke up. I probably won't have many more moments like this to watch him sleep next to me. He's growing up so fast! |
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