Overwhelming Fatigue

I know that it has been days since I last wrote anything. Every day this past week, I would wake up and think about writing...I would think about the fact that so many people are thoughtfully and faithfully checking my blog every day to see how I am faring and that I really should write an update on my progress; something, anything, just so that you know how I am doing. But then, as I would lay on the couch thinking about getting up to write, an staggering sense of fatigue would overwhelm me.

I am so tired of having cancer. I am so tired of this climb. I am tired of not feeling well and being in constant pain. I am tired of not being able to go anywhere without having someone else here to drive me. I am tired of feeling like a lousy mom and a lousy wife. I am tired of not being able to run around and play with my children and I am tired of being too tired at the end of the day to even snuggle with my husband. I am tired of worrying about every single thing I eat and whether or not it's healthy for me and whether or not it will cause a blockage in my recently-operated-on-intestines (yes, this is my latest thing to stress about, because I don't have enough things to worry about already!). I am tired of not having something in my life (e.g., work) that is intellectually challenging. And I am tired of being too tired to even think about anything intellectual. I am just so sick and tired of having cancer -- I want my old life back!

Needless to say, I have had a really hard time motivating myself to get back on my blog and write. Besides the fact that I am (obviously) tired, there is also really not much to new to report -- every day feels like the same slow-motion repeat of the one before. I am gradually recovering and getting around a bit easier every day, but I am still nowhere close to where I was before. Some days I do too much and the next day I am confined to the couch again popping pain-killers every few hours, but overall, I am slowly getting better and I can tell that my body is healing.

Emotionally, though, I feel weaker than I have since this whole ordeal started. I don't want to start chemo again. The last time I started the chemo (back in March) I was in full-blown "fighting mode". My body felt strong and I was ready to take on any chemo drugs the doctors threw at me; I felt mentally prepared to direct the drugs wherever they were most needed in my body. I felt ready to fight the cancer with all my might. But now, I feel like I have been run over by a tractor. I feel so physically weak and so mentally exhausted. The surgery was so much harder than I ever expected. It took so much out of me and the thought of starting chemo again in just 9 days is overwhelming. How in the hell am I going to survive this?? I have already lost about 25 pounds since February and, if this chemo round is anything like the last, I know that I'll lose even more. I already feel so weak -- how can I possibly do this??

But at the same time, I wonder, how can I not?? I cannot imagine finding out two or three years from now that the cancer has come back; that somehow there was a straggler cancer cell that somehow survived everything we have thrown at it already and went to to proliferate. And I cannot imagine thinking that I might have prevented the relapse had I only done one more round of chemo. I couldn't live with myself if that were to happen! I couldn't look my children in the eye and tell them that there was more that I could have done, but that I didn't feel up to it. And so I have no choice...I must do the chemo. There is only one path to follow up this mountain if I want to live a life of no regrets.

I go back to the doctor this Friday for one last check-in before the chemo starts on Tuesday of the next week. Somehow, someway, I need to find the strength within myself in the next few days to begin climbing this last passage of my mountain...