PROGRESS: Day 1.6

Physical feelings

Today was another really good day. I have unfortunately probably developed the cold that Sean and everyone else has had in the household. If not for the chemo, I think I would have stayed healthy. We have all taken a bunch of COVID tests that keep coming back negative, so it doesn’t seem like that’s what is going on. It’s given everyone a cough because of the build up of gunk and some congestion. For me, it’s caused a goopy right eye when I wake up in the morning that clears up after being awake and drinking a lot of fluids. I’m figuring this will probably linger while my body is under all this stress during treatment.

I continue to be really amazed by the readings on my Garmin watch. I have been wearing some type of fitness or smart watch for the last few years and it has given me a really strong understanding of my normal resting heart rate, my heart rate variability, relative sleep breakdown, etc. For people who do not normally wear fitness watches, it might be difficult to understand this desire for data and analyzing your body metrics. However, it really does help me know when something is wrong or different with my body. The downside is that it can mess with your head. For example, last night I slept for 9 hours but my watch said my ”body battery” had basically only charged to 43 out of 100! I mean, that’s barely enough energy to do anything! But I felt more refreshed than that number would suggest. So what did I do? I went for a bike ride anyways. If I didn’t have a watch, I wouldn’t have even though about it, but my watch makes me doubt myself!

Unlike yesterday, today I didn’t get super exhausted after my ride (partly why I didn’t post a progress blog). I did try to go a little easier than yesterday. My average power on my ride was 96 W today versus yesterday when it was 107 W. I was also more successful at keeping my heart rate in Zone 2 than I was yesterday (65.7% vs 53.4%). It’s hard to stay completely in Zone 2 during my workouts outside because there is so much more stopping and starting at lights and intersections. The more frightening thing is to compare this with one my rides from May before I had all of my surgeries. On one of my last rides from May, my average power was 131 W and I split my time between Zone 3 and Zone 2 heart rate zones. That wasn’t even my strongest ride in the last few months! That was just a ”meh” ride. Prior to all of this happening, I was finally building my power threshold back up after pregnancy. I can only hope I won’t lose quite as much fitness although I’m not sure how that is going to play out with the harshness of chemotherapy.

Other goings-ons today

We took Maddie to the pool for a bit, but we could tell she was really tired so brought her home after a couple of hours to take a nap. She was not too happy about that, but she fell asleep in 5 minutes and woke up in a much better mood. I also felt motivated to make dinner, so I cooked up some fish and steak tacos! They were actually very delicious!

I used cod for the fish tacos and put a simple seasoning of ancho chili powder, paprika, garlic powder and salt. I made some quick pickled red onions, a simple cabbage slaw and a fish taco sauce. For the steak, the grocery store was all of out of any kind of skirt or flank steak, so we used boneless NY strip steak. I found this delicious marinade that probably would have been even better if I could have marinated it for more than 45 minutes! I had left over marinade that made for a delicious sauce as well. For toppings, I cut up some raw red onion and corn. I meant to cut up some tomatoes, but forgot! Sean cooked the steak on the grill for me while I cooked the fish on the stovetop. I then heated up the corn tortillas in a skillet (one at a time!), but I find they are so much better when they are heated up. All in all, it was an excellent dinner. And I didn’t have to clean up the dishes!

Emotional feelings

Being able to ride always helps to keep my spirits up and attitude positive. It helps get me back to my normal self and what I enjoy doing. The hardest thing about this journey is that sometimes I feel like “normal” me and it is surreal to remember that I am going through all of this. Then, other times I feel like I am this person whose life is my diagnosis and I don’t recognize myself when I look in the mirror. I haven’t even gone through a huge transformation physically even! But sometimes when I look back at pictures of myself before any of this happened, I feel I am looking at someone who doesn’t exist anymore or someone I don’t recognize. I can’t say I didn’t know how lucky I was back then – I definitely appreciated how lucky we were to be happy, healthy and secure. At least I know I hadn’t been taking any of that for granted!

However, it’s somewhat of a strange thing to think about looking at a previous version of yourself, because you could say that about any past version of yourself and it doesn’t need to be for negative things either. When I look back at pictures before Maddie, those were pictures of someone who didn’t know what it was like to have the most wonderful little person ever to exist in my life. That person, who lacked a lot of patience (and still does) didn’t know I could have the level of patience I have with Maddie. Unlike probably the majority of other couples, not only do I have to go back really far in my life to find a version on myself before Sean, but I also have to go back to when I was a child. We started dating back when I was 15, so that’s basically just looking back at when I was a child! But I’ve always known how incredibly lucky I am to have found such a perfect match and best friend.

I hope that when this treatment is done and it is several (or many) disease-free years down the road, I can look back at pictures of myself before and during this experience and see myself still. I hope I don’t look back and see a totally different person or a person I don’t recognize. A family friend who went through something similar told me that she looks back and sees herself as a stronger person who is thankful for going through such a formative experience. I hope I can emulate her and that I, too, look back and see myself as stronger having gone through this.