The Aftermath Of Chemo - Friday, January 1, 2010

I feel like one big ache from head to foot. For the past couple of weeks, I have been wearing an ace bandage around my right knee, which I injured while innocently making my bed the weekend before my fourth chemo treatment. Because I contracted a fever soon afterward, it was two weeks before the chiropractor could adjust it. It seemed to get better with treatment, but not completely. Walking seven hours a day on sometimes uneven pavements as well as up and down stairs in Rome only exacerbated the problem. As a result, kneeling and climbing stairs have been challenging. Someone who had cancer a number of years ago once told me that for a year after chemo, she felt achy all over her body. I have been feeling the same way. That sparked my thinking. I wondered if chemo causes inflammation, which would lie at the root of the pain in my knee and possibly be the reason for the slow progress in healing. I thought that it would be a better course of action to address the underlying inflammation rather than only trying to manage the symptoms. I talked to the naturopath about it, and she confirmed the fact that I am, indeed, inflamed due to the chemo. She believed I was less so due to the diet I have been following, but nonetheless, still inflamed. So she instructed me to take Zyflamend and to put heat and cold on my knee several times in succession as often as I needed. (The heat, then cold, forces blood into the traumatized area, which induces healing.) She also reminded me to drink even more water than I normally would because of the inflammation. During my last appointment, the naturopath had also told me I could begin detoxifying my liver once a week. So I started doing that a few weeks ago. My thinking, and the naturopath agrees, is that if I can take some of the burden off my liver, my body will be able to heal faster.

All of the above brings me to another subject. At this point I want to encourage everyone reading this blog to be active as well as proactive in your health. Study all you can about nutrition and health. Do not be afraid to ask questions and keep asking them until you find the right answers. You are the only one who lives in your body, so you reap the benefit or pay the consequences of your choices. Think about HOW you want to enter your senior years, either healthy or sickly, and act accordingly. I do not believe anyone can afford to be passive when it comes to his or her health. I began making as many right choices as I knew to make a number of years ago. Who knows if I would not have been attacked with cancer at a much earlier age if I had not. (As I mentioned in the beginning of this blog, my sister was diagnosed with invasive cancer at thirty and died at thirty-five years old.) Anyway, I have actively participated in this entire process from the beginning until now and will continue to do so. I considered what the doctors advised, consulted with the naturopath as well as other practitioners and utilized my own learning. I simply urge all of you to do the same thing -- take charge of your own health. During a health seminar, a doctor told a group of us that it is not a physician’s job to fix people. He was correct. No doctor or practitioner can force anyone to eat right, exercise, get enough sleep, avoid destructive relationships, deal with their emotional issues, etc. Any and all of the aforementioned can contribute to disease. If that is the case, then we must take responsibility for our own choices and seek God’s guidance in making them. Well, I guess I will get off my soapbox now and go take a nap before dinner. Thank you for reading. I hope it ignites your thinking.