Post treatment, how long does it take to feel good?

rduinc said:

Post treatment, how long......
Two months seems about right. I had 8 weeks of chemo and 8 weeks of radiation last summer. The dr. told me my body would continue to "cook" for a week or two after radiation ended, and he was right. Radiation ended, but I didn't improve for awhile,and the improvement I had was slow. Every day I tried to exercise a bit more than the day before, and tried to improve my eating.

Needhope, hope and help is right around the corner, and it's called TIME. I never thought last summer would ever end, and yet, here it is already a year after. The same thing will happen for you and your husband. The joy you will feel when your husband starts to feel better is indescribable. The improvement is slow at first, then will speed up, and at some point you'll marvel that it's behind you. I'm sorry you have to go thru this, but it will make you stronger. I just ran my first marathon and mentally I had no problem finishing because over the last 5 miles, when my body was breaking down, when everything hurt, I could tell myself, "I've been thru worse".

Please let me know if you have any other questions, keep up the hope!!!

Kitkat.tulsa,

Why yes, I went through some of the same side effects stages that your husband has encountered.  Eventually, they determined that my Thyroid went south and I now take a supplement for that.  I have had my blood check by  a Endocrinologist and it was determined to be normal.   It took 7 months for me to get back to eating normally and my weight gain followed my diet from a high of 218lbs PRE-C to 171lbs POST-C and back up to 191lbs 6 YEARS-C.

He will need to dedicate himself to getting up and moving around.  Believe me, he will feel better after a while.  He needs to get the correct nourishment and to have ALL his important systems for “everything normal moving forward”.

He will get there, he just needs to get in the game and get there sooner.  Don’t be a slug, how are we going to take on the other forums this summer in baseball if we don’t get it together now.

Matt

This post has been on here for 8 years and  9 months and I do know that ratface, Skiffin16,  and Cajun Eagle are all doing well today (I hope).

There's both physical and psychological recovery, and for me they happened at different rates.  My last treatment day was 3 January.  By April I was aware that physically most of my obvious trauma was gone, mucusites was over, neck burns had healed, I was off oxygen and walking unassisted.  I almost cried when my wife shared part of her sandwich and I realized I could actually taste the turkey.  I knew from that I would get at least part of my taste back.  Up until then I had been getting by on nutrition shakes and chicken broth.

By June I was back doing lighter duty paleontology fieldwork, moving rocks and digging holes, but I also cancelled an advanced small sailboat racing class because  my confidence was shot, and I knew it would involve sailing in rough weather. I've also whitewater canoed, kayaked, and rafted for decades, but the prospect of a swim was something I couldn't face.   By December I was skiing again, enjoying the fact that I now weighed 40 pounds less than two years earlier, but it was on easy slopes where I was unlikely to fall because my confidence in being able to take a licking and keep on ticking was way, way down.

I just logged my 18 month post checkup.  I spent the last month moving a few tons of flagstone and dirt in 90 degree heat, joining my dork son as he once again turned our racing dinghy turtle (he rolled it, he had to right it, when it came up it left without him.  I was too busy laughing to help), and generally feeling 'good'.  Grim news is river flows here 'bout are so low that I haven't even looked at my ww boats, but if I wore my high-float PFD I think I would survive.  A year ago I thought I might never be able to run rivers again. 

I'm on the scale every morning and evening.  That 40 pounds is not coming back.  Not an ounce.

I developed pulmonary embolisms during cancer treatment.  That little side-effect was a major part of recovery, with a year of an injection of Lovenox into my belly every day at noon.  Lovenox and Warfarin are not 'blood thinners', they are anti-clotters, so if I wacked my self and bled I did rather a fair amount of it.  That made encounters with river rocks sort of iffy, made dumping my small motorcycle non-trivial, and I also got lots of lectures on sepsis risk, bleeding out, age appropriate behaviours, etc.  Actually sailing itself was fine, I borrowed a Capri 14.2 and did a few days of easy mid-day putz boating.  Winds on the Denver area lakes are stable and low, 5-7 kts, until about 4PM.  Our racing usually starts around 6PM, and includes gusts up to 17kts which change direction constantly.  My little Holder daggerboard boat has a planing hull.  It screams along until about 11kts, above that you scream, because it has zero secondary stability. 

Dr Dork (my son), seems to have lost some steps in the process of completing medical school.  Concepts like Points of Sail, Lee and Windward, actually reading his wind direction indicators now are not in evidence.  Even don't cleat down the main sheet in gusty conditions escapes him.  But, I run rigged for all that (I've sailed with him before, there is a pattern...), doesn't take much to bring it back up.  Even has a righting line at the base of the mast, which if you hold on to, allows you to maintain contact with the boat while you use the rope-ladder on the fantail.  All of that also escapes him, tho he has received clear and unambiguous instruction on their presence and use.  Him and another ER resident seem to have joint-ventured on acquiring an old16' Hobbie Cat.  That should be educational.