When I was on Safari in South Africa last year, the game
rangers told us an interesting story about zebras. Apparently, zebras always
look fat even when they are starving. Ill zebras are protected by this
well-covered look to fool predators and you can never tell how ill a zebra is
until it is too late. It only becomes apparent how ill the zebra is when the
fat around the mane disappears and the mane falls down.
The first time my mane started to fall down was when I was
on Xeloda and my feet were so badly damaged by the drug that I had to walk with
a stick. I was tired after my long flight from Johannesburg to Mauritius and
one of the staff directed me to the short line. I did not argue about being
sent to what was an unlabeled disability line.
I was in so much pain that it
was clear that my mane had drooped even if it had not entirely fallen down. If
I had known how much worse things would get as this disease takes its toll, I would not have wasted so much
time feeling sorry for myself (a full five minutes).
But my mane puffed up again and I breezed through a few more
chemos before my mane started doing some serious drooping again with this lung
issue.
This week has been tiresome and my willpower is challenged
daily. This crushing fatigue really wears a person down and stands in the way
of getting anything done.
I’m not
coughing so horribly now after finishing the two antibiotics but the edema is
annoying. Lasix only does a half-hearted job of removing it. I only aim to do
5000 steps a day now, but I still get up every day so I’m still winning. Fortunately,
I can work from home and do just enough to fool some of the people some of the
time that I am working.
So this is what happened: Yesterday, I went to the dentist
for my regular cleaning and I made another appointment for six months. Truth or
optimism?
