Physically:

Well, I’m still chubby.  Whatever.  I’m working on it.

Other than that,  there have been some more disturbing changes.  For one,  hands and feet still have some neuropathy.  It is not debilitating but it has changed me.  I was once a person who only wore shoes and socks when I had to.  I never wore slippers.  Slippers?!  How absurd.  The minute I got home, off came the shoes and socks.

Not anymore.

My feet are sensitive.  Cold floors bug them.  Ouch!  And forget about what happens if I step on a lego these days!  It’s crazy how sensitive my feet are.  I wear slippers.  I wear socks.  Constantly.

It’s weird.  It’s so unlike me.  I think it has changed me.  Not for the better or for the worse.

I’m just different now.

And my hands.  Still very sensitive.  It’s difficult to write for long periods of times.  The other day we were out and about and my husband chided me for not clapping for some performer.

“It hurts my hands to clap,” I told him.

Oh.

That’s different.

My hearing is also off.  I’m thinking it might be permanent.  I even took an online test and while I am in normal range.  I am on the very low side of normal and my test looked very different from my husband’s.

I ask people to repeat themselves.  I turn up the t.v.  I try very hard not to act like an asshole.

Because I am the one with the hearing loss.  It would seem stupid to lose patience with someone else because I can’t hear them.

I try to be polite.

Although,I am not perfect… someone I love dearly is a known mumbler.  I still lose my patience a little bit there.  But now I say,”HEY!  I really can’t hear very well, can you enunciate please?”

I do wish I had been told there was a chance that Taxol would impair my hearing.  I still would have taken it.  It just would have been nice to know.

What?!!

🙂

I’m still having aches and pains.  Laying around for seven months will do that to a person.  My back starts to hurt if I am in the kitchen too long. My core muscles are shot.  Kablooey!  But every day feels a little better.  It really does.

You know what helps?  Big doses of L-glutamine mixed with juice.  It helps a lot

I refuse to be a person who sits around complaining about her aches and pains.  I refuse.

So I am trying to exercise more and am keeping up with my supplements and acupuncture and if I need, some nice analgesics like ibuprofen.

Emotionally:

I am doing ok.  Trying to stay positive.  Trying not to have murky, scary thoughts.

The holidays help.

Early on I was having obsessive thoughts about breast cancer.  It got to the point where I was annoying myself so I knew I was annoying those around me.  Nobody wants to talk about that stuff in the first place.

But like I said, the holidays have helped.  They make me happy.  Decorating and baking cookies make me happy. I like to be happy.

Something else I’ve noticed is that having this big scare has sharpened my bullshit detector.  Not only that, it’s given me distance from drama.  I don’t want any part of meanness or petty stuff.  I just walk the other way.  And I see it.  Oh I see it.

But I don’t care anymore.

And the things that used to bother me…well…they just don’t.

I realize that a lot of it is people’s egos.  I’m trying to see past that and still love the person.

And I am not even joking right now!

I’m just living in my Beth bubble.  It’s actually quite a nice place to be.

I don’t know, life is simplified.  I take things as they come.

I laugh more.