Best weekend since Chemo started!

I felt vital.  I could feel my old energy coming back.  I cleaned out old cabinets and sent off some old furniture in my dad's house to make way for the building that will come soon.  I bought tiles and grouting and tile sealer.  I had a glorious morning with myself at Tasha's, reading the paper and drinking coffee.

Since I started taking Chemo for my RA, I've had some miserable weekends. I would take it on a Friday afternoon and soon would start to feel stoned, unable to drive, unable to think, and have slurred speech and need to sleep.  Which I would do. A lot.  I'd sleep through Friday night, and then spend Saturday ( typically chemo hangover day) in bed. I watched almost every series known to DSTV during that time, sometimes getting through 2 or 3 seasons a weekend. It was lonely.

Then I ran out of series to watch, and also had no real ability to focus on reading books (which I usually do, addictively), and so I started my blog research projects.  Blogs on Narcissists.  Blogs on Autoimmune Disease. Blogs on recovering from breakups. Blogs on Online Affairs.  Anything that was short and sharp and could be read in 10 minutes, I was on it.  Ask me anything.

The achiever in me was quietly concerned - so much wasted time in bed every weekend.  My children were starting to see me only as their bedridden mom, and that was the only time they were really at home, and that's when they could see me.  My husband just went on with his life: how I spent my weekends really stopped bothering him years ago.

My shrink thought it was a good discipline for me: being forced to my bed for a day a week creates a ritual of being calm and with oneself. The reading and reflection and introspection I ended up doing through that time was SO hard and SO good.  And of course, I didn't have Narc John there to hold my hand and care for me through those weekends, so it was all solo.  And thoughtful. And sad.

And suddenly, over the past 3 weekends, I have felt lighter.  And this weekend, I just had energy.  My brain feels back.  I feel creative and inspired again about planning my house building project. Something has shifted in me or my body chemistry that makes this Chemo suddenly tolerable.

And it's healing my body too.  I can feel that.  My hip joint is moving.  From being about to buy myself a walking stick to help me walk 6 months ago, I am now able to walk, climb, get in and out of my car, and am almost at the point where I can, once again, sit on the floor cross legged without pain.  Maybe I'll even be able to have wild sex again, without positioning my leg very carefully each time to protect my hip!!  And I can't remember when last my hands and feet swelled up in pain!

Yay!  I'm coming back people.  The Narc is moving out of my life and I am moving back in.  Wow.  I missed me!

Time to start thinking about how my weekends will work from now on.  I'll be ready for them!