I won't lie. This week has been tough. Not in a way that was full of aches and pains and immediate emotions. But in a way that is nonetheless scary and sobering.
I realize that over this week and last, I have been feeling chest tightness. From time to time, I feel like I'm short of breath or that I'm wheezing. Not badly, but sometimes I have to take in a wheezing deep breath of air. I started to check my heart rate only this week, which led to an elevated heart rate at 122 on one of the days and other heart rates were 112, 108. I don't know what causes it, one of the days was simply getting out of bed, and another day was because of activity. Basically, activities as simple as walking, getting out of bed, climbing the stairs, and going for a walk.
To be honest, I don't know whether this was always there and I'm more sensitive to it now. I think during rest week and the week leading up to it, I was doing pretty brisk walks and it seems like the pace has definitely gone down. I have also been writing down chest tightness for the last week and the week before, almost every day. I didn't do that in the weeks prior to that. But the chest tightness and feeling like my heart is beating harder, doesn't always correspond to the heart rate actually being elevated.
Over the weekend I also felt more fatigued and took naps in the morning and afternoon, which hasn't happened till now. Is that correlated? I feel like I have less energy, but is that because I've just been doing less?
What scares me about the whole thing, is having Mum with atrial fibrillation. It's reading articles where breast cancer patients report after treatment, after a few years, having their heart muscles weakened and having to go for heart operations. It's Tricia, the lady from the breast cancer foundation who had a relapse and is 7 years out now, telling me that she had a fainting spell this year and a heart scare, and that the Tamoxifen caused her heart palpitations. I'm concerned about being strong enough to take the rest of the treatment if this is supposed to be the mildest of them.
It's the reminder that this will be with you for life. That even as you are trying, struggling to get past it, you are fighting for every extra day. It is terrible to think of life in those terms. I'm scared that I will be on medications going forward and that the medication from chemo will cause other big health problems and trade-offs, which you are to be thankful for because it saved your life. It's breast cancer patients a year out saying that their heart rate is 160–170 when they do activity or exercise. I'm doubtful that I'm kidding myself that life will go back to normal, or that I can do the work I used to. That there's a long time when you will not be fine at all.
Sometimes I just kneel and ask God for help. I don't know what else to do. I don't know if I'm lucky that I caught it when I did, that I'm where I am and not worse, or terribly unlucky to be here at all because there still is that incredible disbelief. I wake up, not knowing what to think, and I fall asleep, not knowing what to think.
This week has also been the solidification of realizing that while I can taste food, I don't crave anything. I had been feeling this in the past few weeks, it had been building. There would be weeks where on Day 5, I might feel like wow, I feel like eating something, whatever that was. This has stopped in the past two weeks. Even early in the week, I'm pretty much forcing the food down and I couldn't care less what food it is, because nothing tastes good, really. For someone who cherishes food memory, this makes me feel less myself too.
You would think it would be the hair, or the discomfort of sweating all the time, or not dressing up. But I couldn't care less about not dressing up. Yes, it'd be fun to put on a dress, but I don't even feel like it right now. It would feel, uncomfortable. I don't care about living in shorts or T-shirts, it reminds me that I'd be happy to go to work in jeans and a T-shirt. I would love to look pretty with hair, but it doesn't really bother me.
But, feeling like something might be wrong, and stay wrong with my heart, or just feeling like never eating, or tasting that metallic taste, which isn't so bad right now, or feeling like I don't have the energy to enjoy the day, that makes me feel really sick and emotional.
