I collapse into bed with exhaustion. This would not be a bad thing if it were 10 o’clock at night but it is 10 o’clock on a Sunday morning and my fatigue is overpowering. I lay on my back. My shoulder and back ache from this morning’s activities. I am struggling to maintain life balance after cancer.
True, today I have reasons to be fatigued. I haven’t had a true day off in several weeks. I am just coming off a stretch in the medical ICU and the long hours and high stress of the intensive care unit leaves even the healthiest of people feeling worn down.
I am also working on obtaining a new state medical license for my new out-of-state job. This means many hours of administrative tasks. Both the new hospital and the new state board require background checks but use different agencies. I have been fingerprinted twice in the past week. Doctors are treated like criminals when first applying for jobs. This is something that has always deeply bothered me. Just one more demoralizing hoop for me to jump through to maintain my career.
My frequent medical appointments continue, at least two to three a week. Last week, two appointments, squeezed in between seeing critical care patients. Each moment I sat waiting to see my own doctors I worried that one of my patients would decompensate and need me at the bedside. The week before it was three appointments. This coming week it will be three again, two appointments tomorrow alone.
The hours I spend in waiting rooms and doctors’ appointments equate to a part time job. I am currently overdue for my next immune system lab check, my general labs, and my visit to my primary doctor on the military base but I simply do not have the time. Three more appointments on top of my two to three per week…this is simply no way to live.
I am finding it extremely difficult to properly take care of myself. I’m down about three pounds. I’m a thin woman, this is a big deal. I’m struggling to eat three meals a day. No, let me back up and be honest, I am not eating three meals a day. I am eating two at most and one of them is a small breakfast or small lunch. I know this is not enough calories and specifically not enough protein for me to heal my still-broken hand but I simply can not manage anything more.
Some days, particularly the days I work, I am not drinking enough fluids. This is not good. I know this. I am playing with fire. But how do you eat and drink enough when you are working full time, drowning in non-clinical administrative duties, and having to sit in doctors’ offices two to three times a week?
I am being pulled so many different directions and struggling to manage all these tasks with a broken hand and post-cancer fatigue. Everything is hard. My hand constantly aches. I have limited motion in my wrist. My grip is weak and twice yesterday my water glass slipped out of my hand. One of the glasses chipped, such is life.
I say these things not to feel sorry for myself or to consider myself some type of victim but simply to explain why there are parts of my life I am straight up failing. The house is a wreck. I simply have nothing left to give to cleaning countertops and baseboards when I’m barely able to cook meals for myself. A colony of sugar ants is living behind our kitchen backsplash and march in lines across the countertops. The traps need to be set out, I just haven’t had the energy. The yard is an overgrown jungle and the grass is in need of mowing. I know this but mowing is difficult with a broken hand.
The dirty house and overgrown yard is a constant source of conflict. I have for the third time reached a point where my husband feels my physical progress should be farther along than it is. He is often angry at me for falling short. I don’t blame him for feeling this way. I do fall short. I beat myself up over it constantly.
I have just accepted that I can no longer do it all. I know he is himself tired and burdened with everything I have gone through. This last year has truly tested the “in sickness and in health” clause in our marriage vows. I constantly feel guilty for the extra difficulty my illness has caused him. Still, I do wish that sometimes he would focus on my strength and all the amazing things I am doing instead of all the ways I let him down.
Even so, this weekend I have managed to make some progress. I organized the office and sorted a year’s worth of documents, papers, and folders. I set out traps for the sugar ants. I mowed the yard one-handed (which is why my shoulder and back ache as I lay in bed this morning). I trimmed the overgrown bushes and shrubs.
Doing these household tasks on my precious days off kick my fatigue into overdrive but also leave me feeling a sense of relief. Cleaning and organizing the house is one of the only things I have control over and once completed leaves me with a sense of achievement.
So when this wave of fatigue passes I will get up and clean the bathroom. Each day I will continue to put one foot in front of the other. I am a survivor after all. If I can survive cancer I can survive anything. This too shall pass.
