Working with the Medicines

My sleeping patterns have become consistent, yet odd. Every night, every single night, I'll get up around midnight and find myself wide awake. I'll sit up for a couple hours before climbing back into bed. Then I fall asleep until about four or five a.m. when I get up and feed Freckles and make a pot of coffee for Barbie.

Barb usually wakes up when she smells the coffee.

I have a good breakfast every morning and try to accomplish as much as possible. I make a list for myself everyday. Virtually around noon everyday I start feeling "melty" and fine myself joining Freckles on the bed for a little power map.

Then I'm up for the rest of the day, through dinner, until it's time to go back to bed and repeat the process again.

I can't remember the last time I actually slept through the night.

It's a combination of the drugs I'm on that is causing it. The steroid I take keeps me awake and gets me up in the middle of the night. The chemo I'm on (especially since the doctor doubled my dosage) makes me very sleepy and fatiqued. The end result of the mixture of these two drugs leads to my odd sleeping patterns.

I've never been a napper. I've never liked naps at all.

I told my oncologist that I'm not fond of the naps I have to take, but Freckles seems thrilled that I'm joining him for a nap everyday. He laughed and told me that if a nap was what I needed then it's probably the best kind of treatment of all.

I'm going to try to get back to some simple exercises again today, being very careful with the sore right shoulder and shoulder blade. I did have an x-ray taken yesterday and should have the results of that back no later than Tuesday when I have to go for my next chemo treatment at the health center.

I always remember my soccer coach in high school telling the team that it takes two-months to get into shape and two-days to get out of shape. I've always found that to be pretty true. Unfortunately the road to strength through August has not included exercising and it's important that I get back to it once again.

I just have to plan out my days with that nap in the middle, with Freckles included of course. It has become our routine.