Priorities

We've all got our priorities; I think topping my list is food. I get home from work on my 2 long days, currently Monday and Tuesday, at 7-ish and spend the next hour or so preparing dinner. I've got organic free range beef hot dogs in the fridge and could slap those together in 2 minutes, but I don't want to eat meat very often, and I spend the time to make a pasta dish that encorporates veggies-brocoli, mushrooms, onions-along with herbs and spices-turmeric, watercress, parsley. And a fresh cole slaw based on a recipe from "One Bite at a Time", Rebecca Katz's brilliant cookbook. I feel drawn to devoting the time to eating this way and because of that, other activities suffer. One of my long term goals is to gain some sort of certification in nutrition so that I can legitimately pass along some of the information I've gleaned that I feel contributes to my success during treatment and that I find helps me manage stress and pain, etc, in general. That goal, however, is not topping my list of priorities. Tonight, I manage to take the dog for a brisk walk around the block, but not to do a meditation or yoga practice. I'm not exercising to the point of a full sweat very often, and I know that as much as my diet, the exercise is critical to long term health. So I must constantly re-prioritize. Writing this blog was high enough on this evening's list for it to get done. Yay.

Tomorrow I have a big time at the old infusion center scheduled. I see my oncologist, and turn in the latest 24 hour urine collection, an icky duty to one of the various studies in which I've taken part, and also see the georgous doctor doing this research who will hook up little blood pressure monitors to my fingers and strap a BP cuff on me that I will then wear for 24 hours. My desire to do something for future cancer patient's through this experience sometimes comes back to bite my ass as I try to deal with remembering to pee in the cup for 24 hours and then to deal with a full day of half-hourly BP monitoring. The things we do for love.

But I'm that much closer to done with the whole deal, and I think this will be the last time for the 24 hour surveillances. And at this point, I'm wondering if I'll even make it to the end of the 12 sessions of chemo as the neuropathy, so well controlled for the past several weeks, has really increased over the last few days. It's still not constant, thank goodness, but reasonably consistant. Shooting pains in my feet, occasional numbness of my feet, left hand kind of burning. Again, intermittently, but even so, no sir, I don't like it. 

Well, it's time for bed. I went in to work very early today for a manditory staff meeting. I now know that my employer values my department very much, as it fits their mission of promoting wellness. How that will manifest in future changes to our environment and in opportunities for advancement of knowlege and practice is still to be learned. One step at a time. One day, one bite. Every good day is a good day; today was one of those.