I just came back from my last appointment at the hospital and it seems that I've been pushing myself too hard as of late. My workout program might be the cause of my increased morning sickness. I'm up to level 15 on the elliptical machine for 30 minutes, but I pay for it over the next two days as my body tries to repair itself. I'm finding this rather frustrating since it feels easy while I'm working out, but the recovery time is slow and I hurt more than I should afterwards. I keep thinking that July 1st is a little early for a return to work date, since I have yet to live through one whole day without feeling like shit somewhere along the line. I try not to go out when I feel like hell, so most people don't even realize that I'm sick anymore. Nobody but my wife and some close family see the real me, and I think I need to stop hiding how I feel to myself and to others if I'm going to make this recovery work.
I was up until 5 last night. It seems we're still fighting with the insomnia, but I've discovered that Shaw's video on demand service has freebees during the week. I saw a cool show on sea snakes last night. Hey, it's free I'm not going to argue with that. Besides it was narrated by David Suzuki, the sexiest Canadian alive today so how could I say no?
So, getting back to this go back to work plan, I need to give some of you an explanation as to why I wanted to go back so soon. I was able to purchase stock from my company last year before we started operations. The stock has a one year holding period which means that I can't sell it until July 1st of this year. The stock currently is about 3 times its value, and I bought about 50,000 dollars worth of stock. If all goes well, Caity and I are looking at a sizeable reduction in our mortgage in a little under three months. I wanted to be back at work so that I didn't feel guilty about taking a huge payday while not contributing to the success of my company. It looks as if that was too big of a goal for me to accomplish. It seems that I've completely underestimated the recovery time I would need to beat this thing. So I'm looking at September 1st as a new starting point. It gives me two more months, and allows me more time to really recover, and not just put on a good show for a couple hours during the day. My doctor says it's up to me when I want to return to work, but she did caution me on the dangers of returning to work too quickly. I can really set myself back if I push too hard, so I'm slowing things down.
As of today, I'm no longer pushing myself at exercise. The elliptical will be at a moderate pace and moderate difficulty, and the weight program will be changed to rebuild specific areas of my body like my hips and rotator cuff. Those two areas cause me a lot of pain since the muscles that hold the joints together are weak and loose. I'm going to stick to lifting babies instead of iron. They actually get a laugh out of being hoisted overhead.
I'm trying not to see this as a setback. I'm trying not to be disappointed with my body because of what I see as slow progress, but there are some days when I just want to look up to the sky and scream "Haven't I been through enough?" I'm tired of being tired and pukey all day. I'm tired of feeling like a drain on the resources of society and I want to be productive again. This current state of affairs is killing my soul, and I don't want to do it anymore. The sad thing is that I already made the choice to do this last July and it's too late to go back. I never thought I would look fondly back at the days when I had my own bone marrow. I can't complain about the new stuff since it hasn't killed me yet, but it's really taking a lot more energy to sustain then the old stuff. If it weren't for that pesky bout of CANCER, my old bone marrow would be perfectly good. Oh, well at least I'm not dealing with Gleevec anymore.
Speaking of medications, my levels keep going down. I've been off the Prednesone for two weeks now and I'm slowly getting used to the lower energy levels. I'm down to 50mg 2x daily for the Cyclosporin and I get to drop 25mg per week until I'm off it. I've got to stay on two other medications for a full year post transplant, but I'm really hoping that most of my side effects are from the Cyclosporin. It would really suck to have nausea for a full year so I'm hoping that I'll feel more human as the Cyclosporin tapers off.
That's it for today. I'll write again soon.
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