Well, we are home!
My husband completed his radiation treatments on September 28. (He completed chemo on September 10, only completing 5 rounds because he had begun to experience ototoxicity, a common and sometimes permanent side effect of cisplatin, but the dosage was the optimal minimal amount, and chemo isn't essential for this type of cancer treatment anyhow.)
Radiation for head-neck cancer is powerful, damaging, and life-altering. We knew this going into it, and we also hoped that it would be life-saving. But nothing fully prepares you for the damage. Because the radiation targets delicate areas of the body (mouth/oral cavity, neck lymph nodes) it often causes patients to lose the ability to eat or speak, while also causing painful mouth and/or throat sores and copious, disgusting quantities of mucus production. This was our experience!
Tomorrow it will be five weeks since treatments ended. My husband is still experiencing side effects, and still not able to eat (he takes his nutrition through a PEG tube). But we are seeing slow, prodding progress.
It was so good to get home. My primary goal was to ease slowly back into normal life. After living away for seven weeks, I had to re-familiarize myself with my house! At one point I literally forgot which drawer was my socks drawer! We got home around sunset on September 28, and found that a group of friends had decorated our recently-rebuilt-and-stained deck for us.
You can't see it here, but there's a little settee, a zero-gravity chair, a *ton* of mums, pumpkins....I have the sweetest, kindest friends. I enjoyed many sunrises with coffee out there until it got too cold to tolerate!
We've taken everything at a snail's pace these last five weeks. I waited several weeks before taking Finn back to piano lessons. I waited a couple of weeks before returning to our little tiny co-op (and right now I'm only doing half-days there, until mid-November). School has continued to be quite slow and light. My husband is off of work indefinitely, until he heals more fully, so our days are flexible and less structured than usual. I have found that keeping things slow and loose is an antidote to pain and struggle. After four months of extraordinary mental and physical effort and focus on cancer, I see that we all need lots of space and margin to heal, get our bearings, and adjust. These quiet days are a gift in that sense.
And that is how we are healing. It's so good to be back!
Tomorrow it will be five weeks since treatments ended. My husband is still experiencing side effects, and still not able to eat (he takes his nutrition through a PEG tube). But we are seeing slow, prodding progress.
It was so good to get home. My primary goal was to ease slowly back into normal life. After living away for seven weeks, I had to re-familiarize myself with my house! At one point I literally forgot which drawer was my socks drawer! We got home around sunset on September 28, and found that a group of friends had decorated our recently-rebuilt-and-stained deck for us.
You can't see it here, but there's a little settee, a zero-gravity chair, a *ton* of mums, pumpkins....I have the sweetest, kindest friends. I enjoyed many sunrises with coffee out there until it got too cold to tolerate!
We've taken everything at a snail's pace these last five weeks. I waited several weeks before taking Finn back to piano lessons. I waited a couple of weeks before returning to our little tiny co-op (and right now I'm only doing half-days there, until mid-November). School has continued to be quite slow and light. My husband is off of work indefinitely, until he heals more fully, so our days are flexible and less structured than usual. I have found that keeping things slow and loose is an antidote to pain and struggle. After four months of extraordinary mental and physical effort and focus on cancer, I see that we all need lots of space and margin to heal, get our bearings, and adjust. These quiet days are a gift in that sense.
And that is how we are healing. It's so good to be back!
Quiet days are a gift.
ReplyDeleteGod bless you...
Polly,
ReplyDeleteSo good to hear from you and see you are blogging once again! And how thankful that you have been carried further on your most difficult journey. It might take me a bit, but I am going to catch up...
Blessings!