Yesterday’s sixth radiation treatment preceded a brief visit with the radiologist. The only discussion centered around the fact that I’ve been quite fatigued, off and on. His advice was to push it. Walk. More. A lot more. On the one hand, that seems perfectly reasonable. On the other, during the past couple of weeks, I’ve become winded and incredibly tired just walking (make that shuffling) through the grocery store. So, I’ll have to think on it. And, of course, I must give it a try. Perhaps I’m allowing myself to lose my energy simply by letting it slip away as I sit and think about it. We’ll see. I seriously don’t want to find myself unable to stand, and then unable to get up, from fatigue. I’ll include this matter with my conversation with the oncologist next Monday morning. In the interim, I’ll try to push myself a tad. The much cooler weather of the last few days doesn’t help, in that I find it hard to recover from getting cold; once cold, it seems I’m permanently cold. Ach. Stop griping. Try.
I’m with your radiologist on this. I think you have to push yourself to rebuild strength. One of the problems with fatigue is that, if you respond by shutting down, it just gets worse. I’m not saying to push yourself too much, but make some realistic goals — like, I’ll walk a circuit through the house 4 times a day for a couple of days, then add an extra circuit and do that for awhile, then add another. Make this walking around be separate from any other walking around you are doing. This is your workout. If you got that 02 sensor I mentioned, take a reading at the start, and at the end of your walking around. Write it in your book. Keep doing that and see if your recovery back to a stable 02 reading improves over time. If you have your light hand weights, so some of that while sitting in your chair. The thing is, you don’t want to let your muscle tone go down or then you really will find that you are losing strength and stamina. That is a battle that you actually *can* take on and win.