My moving experience

Do you recall the old Charles Atlas ads, in which the "bully of the beach" kicks sand in the face of the 98 pound weakling, who then gambles a 4-cent stamp, takes the Charles Atlas course and punches out the bully? Alas, at the moment, I am the weakling, albeit a 230 weakling, before he took the Atlas course. The last couple of days, I've been moving my library from scattered points around the house to a newly-completed, consolidated library space. Well, maybe "moving" is a bit of an overstatement. It's more like grabbing a small handful of books, taking a few steps, getting out of breath, sitting down and resting. Needless to say, the vast majority of the books still have not been moved. It doesn't help that the docs have placed lifting restrictions on me--the bones that were compromised by lesions heal, but they don't come back with their old strength--so officially, I'm not supposed to lift more than 20 pounds. I'm also discovering how quickly 52 year-olds get out of shape when they don't exercise for a few months. My legs in particular are really stiff from the exercise I've gotten over the past couple of days. My take-away from all of this is that I should not consider a new career with Two Men and a Truck any time soon! The key here is patience. A month ago, I couldn't have dreamed of moving any books at all. A month from now, I will probably be able to tote books with much less stop-and-gasp action. And, a month from now, I return to the Mayo Clinic for the thorough testing that will tell us whether I am in remission or--well, let's not contemplate that possibility. In the meantime, there are books to move--does anyone out there have a few spare oxygen canisters I could use?

Recovery and Blah Writing

It is getting tougher to write a self-respecting blog about an illness when you are on the way to recovering from that illness. To be sure, I still get fatigued far too easily, and I continue to have trouble getting to sleep at night, and my back still hurts when I bend over, but overall, I'm slowly getting better. Now where's the excitement in that? I've actually reached the point at which I no longer need a nap or two to get through the day. I still need to lie down 2-3 times in order to give my back a rest, but that is less than I used to require. We also finally have the protime level of my blood where it ought to be (actually at last measurement, it was slightly higher than it should be--too "thin"--but that is better than the weeks in which it remained stubbornly low). It's also great that Florence no longer has to give me inoculations of anticoagulants, a fact for which both Florence and my stomach (the injection site) are grateful. So the order of the day is to exercise, build stamina, and get back into a normal sleep pattern. Pretty mundane stuff for the "Stem Cell Stud," but I guess recovery is inherently less dramatic than disease. If any follower of this blog has an idea about how I can make this story of recovery a more compelling read, please let me know!