Fatigue/weakness

My husband who has never been able to sit in his entire life quickly became someone who got a shower, dressed himself and then sat or slept.  It was heartbreaking to watch.  He had days he could not read, type or even watch television.  He had chemo and rad at the same time.  I will say certain pain meds caused far, far more drowsiness than others.  The treatment team did modify his medication protocol because one of the meds caused him to have a very flat affect and no energy.  Mid treatment he totally lost his voice and was not able to speak with any reliability.  When he did try to talk it totally sapped his energy.  We learned the very hard way that you have to meet your hydration and nutrition benchmarks or the fatigued became even more crushing. Also, if he did not do anything else he did complete the exercises from the speech path for swallowing and those from the rad team for neck mobility.  Doing that paid off for sure even though some days it was really hard to even do that. The good news is that 12 weeks post-treatment we took a two mile hike, he talks mostly normally and he works full-time.  He says he feels stronger every day but his stamina and strength are certainly not back to before cancer levels.  Many patients report it was a full year before the fatigue totally diminished.  

Totally normal. Thats how I was. It gets better. Took me months to get back to 100% 1.5 years out now, energy levels great. Hang in there. Important to rest. 

35 rads, 5 Cisplatins, and eight months later...

I finally started feeling something like a person again in May (six months out from last radiation) and now it seems I can tell a real improvement over any two month period (i.e., April was much better than February, June was much better than April) and SLOWLY my energy is coming back.

I feel more like my old self (I'm 57) than I have felt since all of this began. 

For me it was exactly like you have already described; I would take a shower and be exhausted and have to nap.  I would go walk a couple of miles and get weak kneed and have to sit down and if I sat I napped.  I worked almost all the way through treatments and the aftermath, but there were weeks when I wasn't very effective.  I would do a little paperwork and I would take a nap whether I wanted-to or not.  That was one of several side effects of the treatment.  I didn't know a person could be that tired.

The consensus seems to be that one does not start hitting on all cylinders again for a year.  I am feeling much, much better than I have since the middle of October of last year.  ...much, much, much better.

It is hard to be patient. (either kind)

I am committed to getting to the gym 4x per week and yoga at least once.    I manage to do 15-20 minutes on the bike or elliptical and am exhausted.    It is all I can do to regain my strength.