At this point in time, I am healing slowly but surely. I think I am moving beyond the hate of my new boobs, to extreme dislike. This is an improvement, I think… I still cannot imagine myself being intimate with my husband without my breasts being completely covered. Like when you see that “love” scene in a show where the woman has a bra on, and you think, “Wow, she wears a bra to bed and never takes it off?” I used to think that was weird they would depict this only because they couldn’t get a contract sign off on bare boobs. Now I am thinking all those times it was a woman who was ashamed of her breasts, like me. Maybe ashamed is a bit strong; just don’t like them anymore and not comfortable with them being bare for anyone else to see.
I am feeling stronger now and feel like I can walk almost every day. My feet still bother me, and my hands by the end of the day are so irritated I have to take time just letting them rest for a bit in bed so I can fall asleep. I do have an appointment with my Primary Care doc to get a referral to a neurologist so we can work on dealing with the neuropathy correctly and find out of there is any relief until my nerves heal. In the mean time, I do what I can to keep moving and balance the irritation/pain with resting.
From the very beginning of this whole thing, sleep has been an issue for me. The first month I could understand why I was not sleeping, that dreaded “C” word, the unknown. Then chemo started and that just contributed to a screwed up sleep schedule. Since I stopped chemo in February I have been trying to catch up on all the sleep I lost is what it seems like. Now over the past month I have noticed I am having a harder time sleeping. At all… There are at least 3 days in a 7 day period, sometimes more, when I just cannot sleep at all. I may get a 10 or 20 minute cat nap in sometime during the night, but that is it. I started taking the sleeping pills I had from last October. I take one night and try to sleep on my own the next night only to be awake the entire night. The following night I take another sleeping pill. There have been a few times when even taking the sleeping pill doesn’t help. Even today; I slept maybe an hour last night in 10 to 20 minute cat naps. I am surprised at this point I am not passed out on the sofa drooling and snoring. I am no worried I may become addicted to Lunesta. I worry that I will never have a normal sleep cycle again.
I am also having problems with my arms when I sleep. I am a side sleeper and the circulation in my arms is being cut off now. I don’t know if this is a byproduct of the neuropathy, or if I am now so tense from lack of sleep that I am cutting off the blood flow in my arms. Another issue to ask the neurologist about.
This is a long weekend – Memorial Day is Monday. The kids have already told us they will not be coming over for dinner tomorrow, so we’ve decided to go out tomorrow night. I am looking forward to our dinner out. Date night. I want date night. I want to go out and hold hands. Not hold hands as we go face another doctor appointment together, or when we go grocery shopping and move through our errands that need to be completed. I want date night, where we go out, hold hands and enjoy each other with no other agenda other than to hold hands and enjoy the companionship.
I will try to sleep tonight without taking a Lunesta and see how it goes. In the meantime, Hubby and I are going to watch another movie tonight. We’ve had LA La Land DVD for over a month now, it’s time we watched it.
Life is learning to sleep again