Jan 2012 Road to Recovery group

pebee

Hi everyone -

It seems like we go through chemo, radation and surgery together, but then we split up into on of the other groups after we are done with active treatment.  Well, a nurse told me that if I was in treatment for a year, it would take a year to recuperate.  In other words, I will spend all of 2012 so that in Jan 2013, I am back to where I was in Dec 2010. Fun huh.

However, I sit and look over the wreckage and the changes in my life.  There are the money issues.  The family and relationship issues.  The who didn't bother to show up and help issues.  The recurring medical issues - is it a recurrance or a normal part of the recovery.

I thought that we could move through this time together - how are we doing and what will we do next. I will start:

Jan Goals

1. Get radiation finished (6 more boosts to go)

2. Get the rest of the followup appointments scheduled

3. I get my insurance through my job and we switched carriers - so I need to sit down and figure out how much I owe from last year.

4. Start doing taxes - gather stuff up.

5. Find a therapist to deal with the family issues - namely the AWOL relatives. 

Next - anyone else want to join me?

cfdr

I finished up my treatment 12/30/2011...two surgeries, 6 weeks radiation, 3 mos. chemo. Moved to a new home in between radiation and chemo. Prior to diagnosis, I spent 5 months caring for my ailing mother. I was just getting past mourning when I climbed onto the BC roller coaster. Then, when I was finally done with chemo, I got pneumonia.

I can't say that things are a wreck—I love our new home, we have a granddaughter on the way, and some money that I inherited helped compensate for cutting back drastically on my business for 15 months. The pneumonia is on its way out. But if things aren't a wreck, they are certainly a mess. My business is in a shambles, I haven't even fully unpacked my office yet, haven't cleaned our beautiful new house in months. What little exercise I was getting stopped cold with pneumonia.

So there's a lot to be done, and part of me is excited about doing it. But I'm also feeling a lot of inertia. I don't feel like I'm depressed so much as I've gotten into some very sedentary habits (who wouldn't on chemo??). The fatigue is beginning to abate, yet I still feel like I need a break after working only a couple of hours, and something as simple as vacuuming the house seems daunting to me. 

I'm also interested in others who might want to take the 2012 journey together.

My January goal was to transition back to normal; pneumonia delayed that somewhat. So here are my short-term goals:

1. Work a bit more every day until I'm back to working 8 hours/day.

2. Do a thorough house cleaning, sometime soon.

3. Organize my office, sometime soon.

4. Do taxes (uggh). Business property listing is due Monday!

5. Do some brainstorming and meet with a couple of people re: where to take my business in 2012 and beyond.

6. Start the couch-to-5K program on Monday.

7. Have a short but lovely beach vacation with my husband in February.

8. Plan a memorial for my Mom in NY in late March (because of treatments I was never able to get away to scatter her ashes as she wished).

9. Plan a baby shower for my stepdaughter in April.

Wow, that sounds like a lot. I already feel overwhelmed. :-(