I Have More Energy

It was May and I still had no job. I had been looking but nothing was really working out. I still wasn't sure what kind of job I should be looking for. I did not have anything specific in mind so I was looking for a job in generalizations. That never works because you get overwhelmed by the amount of jobs to sort through to try and find something that you are suited to. I just had to keep trying to find something that I could do and that I would enjoy doing.
In the meantime, I had fallen into a pattern for my days. I got out of bed around 8am and had breakfast, checked my three email addresses (personal, job hunting and Playful Kitten Jewelry) and checked my facebook pages; personal and business. Around 10am I would take a walk around my complex to the mailbox that is located on the other side of my complex and back. When I got back I would do some other things on my computer until 1pm, at that point it was lunch time and then I would work on some jewelry until dinner and then back on the computer to load up my new jewelry and log the new piece into my database.  That process may seem simple but it actually takes some time. First I create the piece, then take a picture or several to make sure I have a nice clear picture. Then I load the picture onto my computer from the camera and fix it ( crop it and put my business name on it) At that point I need to set up the piece in Payvment and Etsy (what I was using at the time, I now just use Artfire) and set them up to be on sale. I also load the picture onto my PKJ facebook page. Then I opened my Excel database and entered the information on the new item. Time consuming, but I was still new at this.
May did bring some changes to me. I started to have more energy and decided that I must be getting back to normal! I had put on a lot of weight because I was too tired to be able to work out. I decided to start a diet and exercise plan. I was going to drink Slimfast shakes for breakfast and lunch every day and a sensible dinner. Be warned, anyone that decides to do this, DO NOT buy the shakes pre-made! They are nasty! The best way is to use a blender, I have the magic bullet so I can make it by the glass. Add your low fat milk to the cup, then add the Slimfast mix (chocolate is the best), blend it up and it really tastes like a chocolate shake! Surprisingly it really fills you up too!

Now for the exercise. I was still doing my walk to the mailbox every day but I needed more. I had some DVDs of workouts that I had done throughout the years so I chose Hip Hop Abs because I remembered that I had liked it and you did not have to get down on the floor. Getting down on the floor was a little difficult for me, I don't know if it was because of the forced menopause or just a side effect of the radiation. In any case this DVD would let me tone my abs and get some cardio too so it was the perfect choice.

I was doing so well. I was still doing my Slimfast and I had actually lost some weight at my last doctor checkup. I was doing my workout every day and I was feeling so much better. I had energy again, I really was feeling like my old self before the cancer. I was confident that I was finally back to normal! Everything I had read said that it takes about a year to get your energy back after cancer treatment, and it was about a year before I started getting my energy back. I was confident that the worst was over and I could now really move on with my life. All through the summer I felt good, then came the fall.........

Unemployed and a New Start

Before I continue my story I just wanted to share some great news. Today marks the two year anniversary of the day I finished my cancer treatment! I have been cancer free for two years! 

Fight Cancer Tees

Continuing on with my story. I  had been laid off after twenty-two years of working for Barnes and 
Noble. What a strange feeling...I was really glad that I had a severance package so that I would not have to depend on unemployment to pay all my bills. The first few days were really weird, I did not have to get up at 5am anymore. I spent the first week signing up for unemployment and filling out various papers for my severance. 
My Mom came out to see me the first week of February. It really helped to take my mind off the situation I was in. I don't think that it had really sunk in yet that I was really unemployed. After she left I began to think about what I wanted to do as a job. The book industry was going through so many changes with the rise of ebooks so that was not really an option for me. I was going to have to reinvent myself and figure out a new career. I updated my resume and put it on every job site I could find, but I did not really know what I wanted to do at this point. How would my skills translate to a new career? I was going to do some research and figure out the best direction for me to take. 
In the meantime, I had been planning on opening a Facebook store for the jewelry I had been creating. I used to make jewelry when I was in my 20s, but life has a way of pushing things like that off to the side. In October I had been looking at the magazine section at Barnes & Noble for fall ideas. I love fall, it is my favorite season and I loved to look at the magazines for fun ideas. While I was perusing the magazines, I saw   a beautiful bracelet on the cover of Step by Step Wire Jewelry. After looking through the magazine, I decided to buy it and give jewelry making another try. I loved it! I began to play around making jewelry and I took some pictures to show my friends on Facebook. 

One of my friends also made handmade jewelry and told me to open a Facebook shop too. I thought this would be a great idea and had been creating jewelry for a few months so I would have some items to put in my shop when I opened it. Then I lost my job and for a few weeks I forgot all about my jewelry. During February I decided that I was going to open my shop anyway, I looked into the requirements for a business in California and saw that the only requirement was a sellers permit. I set up my store on Facebook and loaded up my jewelry onto the sales engine, Payvment. I went down to BOE and got my sellers permit, my store was slated to open on March 7th.  Playful Kitten Jewelry was born! 

It was exciting to run my own business. It was also a lot of work. I really enjoy it, it helps me to focus, one of the side effects of having chemotherapy is something called chemobrain. 
Chemo brain is a common term used by cancer survivors to describe thinking and memory problems that can occur after cancer treatment. Chemo brain can also be called chemo fog, cognitive changes or cognitive dysfunction. Mayo Clinic
My memory did not work as well as it used to and making jewelry helps me to train my brain to focus on something specific. I feel that it has really helped me to keep my brain functioning at a close to normal level. I do still have memory issues, but I have just learned to write everything down so I don't forget. I have pads full of lists and ideas and sticky notes everywhere. 
I was still looking for a full time job and decided that maybe I needed to take a couple of classes to gain some more skills. I had seen job postings for proofreaders and for SEO and marketing so I decided that I was going to take a couple of classes online. I took a proofreading class and a marketing class. I enjoyed being "in school" again and I passed both classes with no problem. The problem came when I was looking for a job and saw that the requirements for both types of jobs were experience. It is a catch-22, you can't get a job without experience and you can't get experience without a job. I needed to keep looking and hope that I can find something that is within the scope of my experience. It was only April and so much had happened so fast for me, but I was coping with it and adapting to my new schedule. I wondered what the rest of the year had in store for me..........

January and More Surprises

The new year was here. I was really hoping that this year was going to be so much better than last year. It seems like 2010 was the cancer year, between the diagnosis and treatment and side effects I don't think that I accomplished much of anything else that year. I had high hopes that 2011 was going to be a good year. After all I had been through I deserved to have an uneventful year. Unfortunately for me that was not going to be the case.
I returned to work on January third, this was going to be my first full week since August. The first couple of weeks back to work were normal. I did the things I usually do. I was tired, but I was getting through. We were told that we were going to have a budget meeting on January 19th. I had the first feelings of nervousness when I heard this. It was unusual to have a budget meeting that we were all required to attend. When I say all I mean my entire department. I tried not to think about it and assured myself that we were probably going to discuss ways where we could cut our budgets because sales were down. As the day got closer I began to feel more uneasy. On January 18th, the day before our meeting, I had a panic attack driving home from work. I had to pull over and get out of my car, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get back in the car and get home. After a while, I was able to get back in the car, but I was still borderline panicky. I focused my mind on getting home and I was very relieved when I finally arrived.
January 19th came and I woke up with an incredibly uneasy feeling. I tried to tell myself not to panic until I had something to actually panic about. Thank goodness I still had Xanax, I had to take one to calm myself enough to get to work. I arrived at my usual time at 7am, and tried to distract myself with work. My boss arrived at 9am and our meeting was supposed to be at 9:30am. A few minutes before the meeting was to begin someone from Human Resources came to our office. I knew that my uneasy feeling had been correct. We called in for our meeting and were told that we were laid off and that the HR person would walk us through the paperwork we needed to fill out for our severance packages. I was in shock, even though I had a feeling that this might happen, it was still shocking. I had been working for B&N for 22 years, and now it was over.

We were offered a very generous severance and we could also collect unemployment as well. I was thankful that I would have the time to find a new career. The book business was changing, with the advent of ebooks sales of actual books had been dropping. I can't blame B&N, they had to evolve with the changing industry, but because the industry was changing, I would need to find a totally different career. I packed up my stuff in my office, I had several boxes worth of papers and books etc, working in that office for 7 years, I had made it my second home. The saddest part was saying goodbye to my boss and my friends in the store.
Not having a job was a difficult thing to get used to. I had been working since I was 14 years old.  What was I going to do?

Working Again

I was really happy that I was still entitled to my vacation time. I had no plans to go anywhere, but having those days enabled me to take at least one day a week off. Having those days made all the difference in the world for me to make it through the last part of the year. I was still so tired, I really missed those daily naps I used to take in the afternoons. I was hoping to regain some of my energy as time went on. I had read somewhere that it could take up to a year after treatment to regain your energy. I just had to take one day at a time and hope that my energy would return at some point.

Autumn is my favorite time of the year. By that point I am usually so tired of the hot weather and sunny days. Many people think that Southern California is always sunny, but that is not true. Our winter is more like autumn and it is our rainy season. One thing that happens every year around this time is that I get a little more tired than during the summer. Maybe this has to do with less hours of sunlight, and when it is dark outside my body tells me it is almost time for bed. This meant that I was extra tired this year. 

I did have some lasting effects  from my ordeal other than the tiredness. I guess I can say that the tiredness was partially to blame for the other effects. Before surgery I had been pretty strong with good muscle tone, I feel like I lost it all during surgery. My abdominal muscles were cut through during surgery and that destroyed the stability of my core muscles. Putting on a sock could cause me to pull an abdominal muscle. Even after the surgery, I had to be really careful not to do anything strenuous for the first six weeks after surgery. This meant that  I was not able to do any working out, I could just take short walks. Once those six weeks were up I went right into radiation and chemo. That was enough to deal with, and I certainly had no energy to work out at all. Even at this point, a couple of months after treatment had ended and I still had no energy, just making it through the day at work was hard enough on me. This being said, I was also dealing with poor muscle tone which made doing normal tasks even harder. One other side effect that I was hoping would go away were those panic attacks. I wish I could say that they went away after treatment, but I could have another attack at the most inopportune times. I have found myself going to see my doctor and standing in front of the elevator and that panicked feeling coming over me, time to take the stairs. At least the attacks did not come too often. 

November came and Thanksgiving was right around the corner. I sure had something to be really thankful for this year. I survived Cervical cancer and the treatment! I usually go to visit my Mom during Thanksgiving week, but there would be no traveling for me this year. I was too tired to even think of braving the insanity of an airport during Thanksgiving. Instead, I planned my own little Thanksgiving at home. I could have some turkey and take a nap and rest. I did miss seeing my family, but I had a relaxing Thanksgiving. I am one of those people that puts up the Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving, not this year. I was not as strong, so this year I needed a plan. I keep my decorations in the garage, I have two large totes and a small tote plus my little tree that need to be brought upstairs to my apartment. I decided to try to bring up one each day and to put up my tree the next weekend. That was the plan, and it did work out, the larger totes were difficult but I managed to get them upstairs.

 On Saturday I began to decorate, now this usually took me a few hours to get the whole house done, but this year I would have to do it in stages. Now the first step was to make room for the tree and get it set up. I moved a few light pieces of furniture and started setting up my tree. 

I was able to get the tree set up and the lights on it the first day. I had to take frequent breaks, but I got it done. Sunday I was able to get the tree decorated and put up my other decorations around the apartment. It's a good thing my place is small so I was able to get it all done. 

I was really looking forward to Christmas, not only because I love Christmas, but because I would have off from Christmas until after New Years. It is a slow time at work and most of my department took that week off. Christmas came and it was wonderful. I had the best present ever this year, my health. I was able to relax and recover from working the last four months. Now the only problem that I could see was that I was going to have to start working five day weeks again when I got back to work. I hoped that I would be able to adjust to working full weeks again....

Done with Treatment...Now What?

I was so happy that there were no more surprises! July 9th came and I finished my last treatment! What an amazing feeling of relief. Now that I was finally finished life could go back to normal. I had read that after a few weeks any side effects from radiation should stop, so I made the decision to return to work as of August 2nd. This would give me three weeks to regain some of my strength and hopefully be less tired. I would be seeing my Oncologist the week before I was planning to return to work. She could give me the all clear at that point and I was finished.
I spent the next two weeks relaxing and taking lots of naps. I was feeling fine except for the tiredness. I had no obvious problems and no side effects at all. I went to see my Oncologist and everything was fine. I would be seeing her every three months for a checkup for the foreseeable future. She signed off on me returning to work on August 2nd.
I called my boss and told her I would be back on August 2nd, she was happy that I would be back. I let her know that I was still pretty tired, so would do what I could. She told me to do what I could and not overdo it. As the end of the week came, I was actually getting a little nervous about returning to work after all I had been through. I didn't know if things would be different for me or if I could do all the things I used to do.
Monday came and I got ready for work. I was tired, but I figured that if it became too much for me to handle, I could always leave early. It was nice to see all my coworkers, everyone was glad to see me back. As I headed to the back of the store to my office I was a little worried that I would not be able to keep up, we were heading into our busiest time after all. For us, Christmas was now, we had to make all the decisions for what we were promoting that holiday and then we needed to get our orders in within weeks. I made the decision to not worry about it, no one expected me to jump back in as if nothing had happened. I would take my time and catch up first before I took over my old duties. After being out of the office for four months, the first thing I needed to take care of was my email. I had thousands of emails to sort through, and that is what I did for the first couple of days. I also called some of my publishers who I used to talk to daily to let them know that I was back. I also called the person that had taken over my duties while I was out to let him know that I was back. I asked him to continue taking charge of our planner (this involves keeping it updated with changes and making sure that everyone gets their jobs done by the due dates) until I had a chance to catch up.

I made it through my first day back at work. I was so tired that I almost nodded off in the car while sitting at a red light. Four more days to get through this week. I knew it would be very hard at first to get back into my old routine but I figured I would get used to it. Somehow I made it through August. I still did not have any energy and I was completely exhausted by the end of the day. I did find out something that was going to help me a lot. Even after being out for four months, it did not take anything away from my vacation and personal days. I still had to take four weeks of vacation and two personal days! Now that was some really good news! I talked it over with my boss and decided to spread my vacation days through the next four months. I managed to get it so that I would not be working any complete 5 day weeks at all for the rest of the year. I couldn't believe I was still so tired and had so little energy. It was almost two months since radiation had ended, when would I feel normal again?

My Last Chemo?

The next three weeks followed the same pattern as the first two. Radiation was not bothering me nearly as much as the chemo was. I guess I can only be glad that this was my only real side effect during my treatment. I did have some dry skin from the radiation, but it was not much worse than normal dry skin. I have seen the horror stories that some people actually get radiation burns from the treatment! I will definitely take a little dry skin over that!

On June 30th it was my final Chemotherapy treatment. I was so relieved that this part of my treatment would be over as of today. I would still have six more radiation treatments after this, but I could deal with that. I checked myself into the hospital, and at this point the nurses all knew me. As I entered the cancer wing, I just checked the board and found my name and room assignment, handed my paperwork to the nurse at the desk and got myself settled in my room. I had one of my favorite nurses that would be in charge of my chemo. I was so excited that this was the last time I would be doing this. I got my IV and started my fluids. Everything was progressing normally, I was reading a book while waiting for lunch when the nurse from my Oncologist came in to check on me. I told her everything was going fine and I was so glad this was the last chemo. She corrected me and said I had one more chemo left. Oh no! At this point I had enough surprises to last me a lifetime! I sternly told her, NO! This was my LAST chemo! I was mentally prepared for the five treatments, I could not, would not do another. I finished the day, and when my last bag of fluid was done, I unhooked my own IV (told you I was getting good at this). I said goodbye and went home.
I had an appointment to see my Oncologist the next day. I prepared myself to argue with her if she tried to push a sixth chemo treatment. It was not a surprise to me that she did want to talk about it. I told her emphatically that there is no way I could go through another chemo treatment. I think she saw that I was at my breaking point and she reluctantly agreed that I did not have to have another treatment.
I only had five more radiation treatments to get through and I would finally be done with treatment. I just hoped there were no more surprises coming......

Support and Side Effects

Before I tell you if there were any side effects, I have something to say about a support system. Having people support you through this ordeal is the only way to get through it. Now I don't want you to think that the only people that supported me during my treatment was my Mom and Step-father. I actually had quite a large support group, and that makes all the difference in the world. I had my MCs and my twin on facebook, my friends T and Q and N who helped me out when I needed it. They all offered moral support and commiserated with me about what I was going through.  The rest of my family, my Dad and brother, though they are on the other side of the country, called me frequently to check on me. My aunt sent me cards continually throughout my treatment, and they really brightened my day. My boss called me periodically to check on me and pass on well wishes from everyone at work, and to catch me up on all that was going on. I even had one of my publisher reps that called me weekly to see how I was doing, thanks D2. Cards and calls really brightened my day and made me realize that I was not alone. I have to say that my faith in God really got me through the dark times. If anyone that reads this that is going through treatment, or is about to go through treatment, make sure you have people that support you. If you don't have anyone, you need to find a cancer support group to find people that are going through the same thing as you are. You can't go through this alone, it is too hard. 


Thursday morning, June 10th. I woke up late again, chemo sure does make you tired. I was hoping that this week would be different, and I would  not have the same side effects. I guess that hope was in vain...today started off the same as last Thursday. I immediately took another stool softener. This week I was not going to take a laxative again because last week, that was what really killed me. My body was trying to move things along because of the laxative, but it was too hard...literally! :O
I guess the chemotherapy drugs must really dehydrate your body. Even with five hours of fluids during the chemotherapy it was not enough. I was drinking a lot of water too, and now I knew why they told me to drink a lot. 

I do have to say that this weekend was not as bad as the first one. I am not saying it was pleasant, I am just saying it was not as bad! I drank lots and lots of water and kept taking stool softeners as often as I was allowed. It seemed like this was going to be my pattern for the next few weeks. Chemo day, then three days of constipation, I can only say I was happy that this was taking place over the weekend, then some progress on Monday and Tuesday I feel normal before it all starts again.  I was going to have to try and compensate for the dehydration and drink even more water than before. Sigh...this was going to be a long month...