HAPPY TWENTY-TEN!
I am so happy to begin this new year, 2010. First of all, it is so much easier and pleasant sounding to be able to say twenty-ten than two thousand nine! So after the personal and political struggles of '09, I appreciate beginning this new year and new decade with pleasantness and ease. It is my heartfelt intention that they remain that way. Secondly, after writing about my salmonella-poop horror stories, I remain at heart an optimist and so I'm still looking for that pony in this new year!
And I am cautiously optimistic about a new discovery. But first: the last blood tests indicate that the cancer is not active, under control, or whatever. So that is baseline good news for this month. Now, I have never liked oxycodone so I suggested to Dr Seigle (my Florida oncologist) that he give me the three-dayFentanyl patch for pain. And to my surprise he did. I wanted it to see if it would help with the pain and discomfort of the neuropathy which I think is getting worse.
It does seem to lessen the discomfort and pain of the neuropathy but in a subtle way. However, I discovered that I must have been in more overall body pain than I realized because now I feel much better. I am more active and motivated to do things and have less need to be sitting and resting all the time. Because it wasn't acute pain, I associated what I was feeling with fatigue rather than pain but it seems it was both. I sleep more, which is okay with me, otherwise I notice no adverse side-effects. This past week has been for me the most pleasant, comfortable, and normal week in a very long time. (could my pony turn out to be an opiate???)
The holidays were quietly enjoyable for me. A Bostonian at heart, I have difficulty relating to jingle bells surrounded by palm trees and impatiens. The most ubiquitous outdoor Christmas decorations down here are the huge inflatable images of Santa etc. Problem is what goes up must come down, so as I drive down the street I see what appears to be melted globs of plastic hanging from rooftops and draped over shrubbery! Truly absurd.
Christmas Eve a friend and I watched the HBO Wanda Sykes comedy concert and , truly, laughed for two full hours. It was the best! The next day a small group of us had a Jewish Christmas: dinner in a Chinese restaurant and a movie ("Nine" - also wonderful - to see Sophia Loren in full presence at 75 or 80 is worth the ticket alone!) New Year's Eve I had dinner with seven other Bostonians at a friend's condo and that was thoroughly enjoyable. At ten the others were going downstairs to a fireworks cocktail party, but when I checked in with my energy level I found it plummeting so we called a cab. Ten o'clock New Year's right? The doorman told us he'd been trying to get through to the taxi company for forty minutes. But just as a bit of anxiety was setting in (the others had been drinking and didn't want to drive on New Year's) my friend reached the cab company and was told there was a cab in the area and if I got out onto the street I could get it. We went flying down the stairs and burst out of a side utility door to avoid others waiting at the front entrance just as the cab was coming up the street. I felt like Cinderella. Bob hailed the cab, I jumped in, and was in my bed twenty minutes later. As it should be. Going out at night is relatively new for me, remains infrequent, and definitely ends by ten o'clock. Hey, it beats not being able to go out at all. I'll deal with the old geezer self-image later!
Twenty-ten has certainly had an easy and pleasant beginning. Sweet.
