news from nowhere

Back to work today, after a whole week off sick...
I'm lucky, in that physical side-effects of treatment aren't too bad. On good days, that vague poisoned feeling which creates a cellular vibration too subtle to be graced with the label 'shakes'; digestive grumbles as if I've eaten food that's slightly off; a budding heachache that luckily seldom flowers fully; a faulty intellect that operates intermittently and frequently blanks altogether; feeling constantly tired somewhere on the scale of 20-50 (where 30 is comparable to being at altitude). Breathlessness, dizziness, itching scaly elbows and scalp, gums that bleed copiously, an increasing propensity to sleep 12 or more hours out of 24... Interesting little injuries creating sudden blood blisters - which vanish as quickly as they bloom. Sometimes having to sit on the edge of the bath to brush my teeth because standing up is beyond my capabilities...
...add a cold virus to a depressed immune system, mix with a determination to fulfill my work commitments that week...
maybe it's not so surprising I had to take last week off to recuperate.

The cumulative effect of even such low-grade physical side-effects is tough in itself, but the emotional effects are even trickier to unravel.
There's the fact that my sense of self seems to have buggered off for the duration, along with motivation and creativity. I'm a real control freak, so not being able to get a proper handle on this is driving me nuts (OK, nuttier than I was pre-treatment). As far as I'm concerned, I've made enough concessions to 'being on treatment' (there's work and there's recovering from being at work; those are the boundaries of my life at the moment - which means I'm a boring sad git) and days when those concessions are just not enough and I have to take time off sick are hugely frustrating, and thus in themselves further debilitating.

I don't mind 'living to work' under the normal circumstances of my life - 'work' includes facilitating creative writing workshops, writing and performing alongside whatever I'm doing to pay most of the bills.
Finding I can barely cope with just the bread-and-butter job, let alone anything else, is a real shock to the system.

On the other hand, during most of last week I was seriously questioning my optimism at expecting to work through treatment at all.
By the end of today, the self-questioning had become about whether treatment renders me largely incompetent at my job... (the answer depends on whose standards you use as calibration!)

Highlights of last week were sunset moments on Thursday and Saturday.
If I don't make time for such crucial intervals within my restricted life, I'll 'lose' more time than necessary to these toxins...

Onward and upward...