The last two weeks have brought uneventful trips to the hospital – thank goodness. Today I am at the start of week 4 for this round and platelets are working their way up and white count is down, but all on track as far as where the numbers have gone each round prior. As Chip commented on an earlier post, it is starting to become very routine at this point and less worrisome. I’m starting to understand the changes in my body and recognize symptoms based on changes in my blood count or just as a result of being a week or two out from chemo. For example, I recognize now that the week after chemo I most definitely have some fatigue issues. I also think that I get a little jittery and tend to feel “off” when my platelets go down. This all makes sense when I think about how I felt in the months leading up to my diagnosis. As my counts come back up, most of these symptoms disappear.

I think the side effect of all of this is that I am getting a little crankier when my counts are going down now, mostly out of irritation that I know I could feel perfectly fine if they just stopped giving me medicine to make me feel this way! But I am almost half-way there and I know I would never forgive myself if I skipped out on this trial, so I am sucking it up and plowing through.

My good doctor friend often uses the term “trusting your body.” Being in remission, one of the hardest lessons is learning to trust your body and know that a headache is just a headache, a pain is usually just a pain and goes away, etc. With that in mind, I have been learning to trust my body more and it’s made an enormous difference. In the last few weeks, I have been running 2 or more miles for each run, increasing the weight and intensity of my strength-training and doing a lot more yoga. I feel strong again. I feel like it’s okay to push a little harder because my body can do it and wants to. And each time I surpass a milestone for the previous week or two, I build more confidence. I can’t say that I don’t still deal with fears and hesitations but I’ve set my mind to where I want to be and I’m learning to more quickly push aside the doubts. I even committed to running relay in IronGirl in August. It has been a dream of mine since college to do a triathlon. Although I won’t be swimming and biking, just having the opportunity to participate a year after a cancer diagnosis and while still going through chemo, makes it just as satisfying.

For those who are interested, I am really adjusting to a vegetarian a diet. My kids are doing great with it too, although I do still include meat in some of their meals. Mainly, I’m focusing on getting 7-9 servings of fruits of vegetables in daily and trying to eat a “rainbow” of foods. This has made it fun for the kids too. What we’ve discovered is that it’s not as hard as you think and your body will really feel better for it. If you commit to it, a) it becomes easier; and b) you will get addicted. I recommend giving it a try.

Lastly, I just wanted to share a link for all of my friends who are training for marathons and half-marathons in the coming months. Athleta runs an incredible blog (http://www.athleta.net) with loads of information about how to train, especially how to integrate running and yoga. I downloaded a 12-week training guide by a yogi named Sage Roundtree (my newest online ‘mentor’) that I’ve been following and loving: http://www.athleta.net/chi/wp-content/pdfs/half-marathon-training.pdf. Try to check it out.

Have a great day!