It's been two weeks from the end of treatment and I feel really great!!! I've been cooking and going to the gym and packing and painting. I haven't really been taking naps or feeling tired at all. I praise God for my energy returning! I'm waiting for that slump to come and it should be here soon, but for now I'll take the great days! I haven't really been noticing any vision issues really at all, either, which is really nice. The only symptoms I am noticing are regular short term memory loss and trouble with noise/chaos/decisions. I can put something down and then it will take me an hour to find it. While this sounds really benign (and it is), it is very frustrating. I can lose my coffee 10 times each morning. As the doctor told me before, it is hard to know which symptoms are from radiation and which ones are just normal aging. Decision making has also been particularly hard for me. It took me almost a month to decide on a flight and that was with asking Paul every night to review details and help me to make the decision. With moving, traveling, summer plans, kids camps, school end of year parties, birthdays, anniversaries and more, I see nothing but blurry lines and a jumbled mess. I am missing things I never missed before with presents, special days and just my (old) normal thoughtfulness. I have to focus on one thing and only one thing and I can't multitask. I apologize if you are on the (not) receiving end of this but as I was trying to explain to Paul it is as if all of these things are just floating around in my head and I can't grab them to put them in any sort of order. I can't get to a point where I can plan for things coming up because I am trying to focus on a) where I put my coffee and b) what HAS to be done today. Again it's a weird and challenging struggle between being completely at peace because I know that it is a great blessing to feel well and be functioning and alive and a complete panic because I simply don't have the ability to get things done. So, I figure I'll just ask for forgiveness a lot.
In other news, my neighbor has a dear friend who has been battling brain cancer for 10 years now. She has had 4 craniotomies and gone through multiple rounds of chemo and radiation. Each time her tumor has regrown. Each surgery, however, has come with side effects, some of which are irreversible.
A recent study has come out that shows that cannabis, yes, cannabis, has the power to shrink and perhaps cure brain tumors.
My neighbor's friend has been taking a medically altered form of cannabis that has the "high inducing" part removed and just uses the medicinal part. Since using this compound she has had the longest span of no regrowth since she was diagnosed.
This is all mind-blowing (no pun intended) for goody two shoes me and I am 100% not on board yet. It is legal in Washington state and my doctors have said that there is great promise in these treatments. We don't have any signs or evidence that my tumor has regrown yet and so this isn't even on the table as a remote possibility, but the research is really amazing.
I'll be thinking and praying about this one for a long time!
http://www.medicaldaily.com/cannabis-shrinks-brain-tumors-associated-highly-aggressive-form-cancer-310720
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/18/marijuana-brain-cancer_n_6181060.html
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