Week 42 – Sunday: Tired But Content
When I am not thinking about what I will do (and be like) post-treatment, I am increasingly aware of how tired I am feeling each day. I was startled to realise the other evening at work, during a lull between calls and record–keeping, that I just wanted to put my head down on my desk and go to sleep. I have never experienced this before in my working life.
And at home, it is taking me ages to do anything. Returning telephone calls and emails seems to require a concentrated effort and takes a long time. I started to write to Lu this past week and realised I had rambled on, almost incoherently, for two pages and hadn’t really articulated anything. No wits on that occasion. I abandoned the email – but did manage another day to write a more focused comment on her blog instead, on a day when I did have some wits about me. I had a telephone conversation with Niccie Rowan of the UK Hepatitis C Resource Centre this week and felt like a gibbering idiot while I was trying to articulate some point or other. (But felt quite comfortable adding if I sound like a brain-fogged HepC person on combo treatment, that’s because I am – it’s so great to be in contact with people who understand.)
I have got used to finding the trip to hospital for clinic appointments and back ‘a long day’. Now I am finding I keep an eye out for a chair when I am out shopping with Carol, as I am easily short of breath. Even my ‘restricted’ lifestyle is becoming arduous.
I have heard that the last few weeks of treatment can be difficult. And those completing treatment recently have written confirming that. No doubt there are residual effects of hosting these strong drugs in my system over the 48 week treatment, which may be even greater than for the 24 week treatment.
Some time ago I decided a good strategy to help me through would be to go on holiday during the final weeks of treatment. I am hoping this proves to be right. In just over three weeks we are going to Spain again and I will be there during the last three weeks of treatment. Doing as little or as much as I want to.
So I am not moaning or complaining about my state in life at the moment – I am content to recognise I am tired, live with it and leave what I don’t feel I can focus on or achieve at the moment.
I am also aware that my body-shape has changed on this treatment. A year ago I was finding my size 34 trousers and jeans roomy and comfortable. Then they all began to be a bit too roomy, so I hunted out old pairs of size 32 cast-offs left about by my sons. Now I am again raiding their cast-offs looking for the size 30’s. All my size medium shirts and t-shirts just look baggy and I am now buying and wearing size small. So these days I am about the size and shape I was when I first started going out with Carol 27 years ago. And I am liking it. Ironically, for a someone on a ‘harsh’ treatment regime, I feel more fit and healthy than I have in years, despite the heavy drugs. I think this is because my liver is coping again.
In terms of weight – I have lost only 5 pounds over the past 42 weeks. I have lost muscle tone, of course, living a less active lifestyle – although Carol points out that the weekly massages do help keep up tone and that my muscles are not ‘wasting’ away.
So I am hoping that post-treatment I will not find myself gaining or increasing too much. I will be watching and working with this as an issue. Certainly I have no intentions of allowing myself to return to the size and shape I was four or five years ago. Looking back at photos of me then, I can see I was swollen and puffy in the face, thick around the middle and several stones heavier (translation: I weighed about 35 lbs or 16 kgs more). Where I used to think it was only ‘middle age spread’ I can now see it was the result of alcohol and bad diet, which my liver couldn’t metabolise. I will continue to focus on keeping to a liver-friendly diet and whatever else I can do to help my liver to function and regenerate.