Feeling a bit better.

Yesterday was day 5 of feeling more off than usual with headaches and body aches.   Today I think I feel better.   I know not to trust that my energy is going to be stable from day to day or even in the same day.   But I’m grateful to feel a bit better – like putting the sheets in the wash wasn’t something I had to drag myself to do.   Soon I am going to go ride Banner – we are in a little bit of a disagreement about cantering right now so I expect to take it easy and just walk/trot.   I need to be sure I’m back at full power before I try keeping him cantering through his playing bucking.   I know it’s not evil bucking but if I’m tired at all, which often I am, I can get thrown off balance and be forced down to a trot to get myself re-combobulated (I know that’s probably not a word but that’s how it feels) and thus am rewarding him my stopping what I was doing because of a little buck.  Or two.  But really, for those of you who don’t ride, it’s more of what I would call a “crowhop” and it’s really just a little extra boing.    Becca, who rides him quite a bit when I don’t, has not had a problem working him past it so it’s just something I will have to work through with him when I can.

In other news I was trying to count my supplements this morning.   One of the surprising sources of overwhelm during cancer treatment is being advised to take so.  Many.  Supplements.   L-Glutamine, Biotin, Astralagus, Ginger Root, some concoction of Chinese herbs from an acupuncturist (I gave up on those because 3x a day was too much), B6, B12, Vitamin D…I could go on and those are just in addition to the other things I used to take such as a multivitamin (I stopped but will restart I think) and Vitamin C.   Most of these are in caplet or capsule form but some are liquid or powders that need to be stirred into liquids.   I am what doctors would call “non-compliant” much of the time because I just forget what with having to hot compress my eyes to keep styes/chalazoids from forming and icing my feet (old injury maintenance) and massaging various lotions and potions onto my radiation injury.   Also, for the past two weeks, and currently, padding the scabby part with a vaseline-soaked gauze pad they gave me and then putting a thick “abdominal pad” on top of that and then putting over that a pair of women’s hospital issued undies with the crotch cut out, tube-top style.  Yep.  That is real.   The hospital folks are creative.

And that’s before I even brush and floss!!

I wouldn’t have described myself as high maintenance before cancer.   But, right now, yes I am and it’s often too much for me.