May 27, 2007

This week has been a trying one for me. The radiation that I've been receiving has caused blisters on the bottom of my right foot. This was expected but not so painfully. The week before I had a blister the size of a quarter which, as radiation increased day by day, developed into a large one covering the instep of my foot. Not to get real gross, but it became puffy by each treatment. Thus this week, my only recourse was to use the wheelchair to get to and from the car to the radiation treatment. Lisa would drive over and Michael would wheel me into the hospital, listen to the ladies chatting in the waiting room when I got treatment, and wheel me out to the car where Lisa would wait for our call via cell phone to pick me up to avoid parking fees. The one day Mike and I had to park in the parking garage, by the time he wheeled me over to the hospital for radiation and back, he got a full upper body workout going over curbs just pushing his overweight mother to the hospital. No gym workout for him that day!

Since the hospital was closed on Memorial Day and I would receive a 3 day vacation from the radiation, the doctor decided to give me Friday off to give my foot an extra day to heal before the next week of radiation. This has helped with the pain, and the swelling has gone down somewhat, but I still can't put weight on my right foot. All I could do was sit on the loungechair with my foot propped up and watch TV. I missed the whole Rosie fight on "The View" as I was watching "The Price is Right". I can't even watch the right shows.

Here's hoping to a better week of chemo and radiation. I'm anxious to get this radiation over with to be able to walk without crutches again. You don't know how much I envy people walking without problems. Will I get there someday? Hopefully by 2008 I can look back on this year and learn from it, understand why it happened, and take precautions that cancer will not be in my vocabulary for a long time.

Have a good Memorial Day!