I've seen someone about some brain issues, probably lingering chemo stuff, not very likely directly related to cancer itself, thank goodness. I'm planning on blogging about that at some point.
Also have scans scheduled next week. It seems like I just did that, but fall is a busy time and it seems to make my days fly.
Probably speeding things up even faster is that this is my first stage iv Christmas and I'm simultaneously feeling the urge to celebrate how well I'm doing and to make it a good one in case next year is not as good or even worse than that. For me, that mostly seems to involve baking and cooking. And eating, lots of eating.
On the other hand, although I did take a couple of days off for Christmas eve and Christmas day, and 2 particularly busy days of prep the week before, I'm still getting my steps in most of the season and plan on continuing that moving forward.
It's funny, because I've always known exercise is a good idea (who doesn't?) but I guess when an oncologist tells you something, it just carries a little more weight. And for me, at least, that's made it much easier to be consistent. And to get back up and try again the next day if I've had a particularly bad day.
I've been doing this step counting thing for 221 days now. It took me a bit to get into the routine, but I've now only missed the 10,000 step goal 9 days out of the last 190 or so (I love spreadsheets and tracking things, can you tell?), so that's something I'm proud of myself about. As a kid I had a bad reputation with my mom for not finishing projects, and goodness knows I've had a number of self-improvement plans fall by the wayside over the years, so setting and actually meeting goals like this feels especially good.
I recently read this article titled, "Research: Breast Cancer Treatment Should Address Obesity," which has me again thinking more about exercise and cancer. The article says a lot about exercise and quantifying how much it helps reduce the odds of relapse. I know it's too late for me to worry about relapse since I'm already well down that particular path, but I have to think the benefit is still there.
I don't know that everyone finds their oncologists motivating, and having cancer is stressful and I know for a fact that it doesn't always inspire the most rational thought processes (been there, done that, and oftentimes still at it), but I think it is a good idea for oncologists to talk about this kind of thing with their patients. It runs the risk of sounding like blaming or piling on to add this discussion to the mix, even if it's addressed carefully (I often wonder if things would have gone better if I'd been exercising regularly immediately before 2012 or for most of the time between 2012 and 2014), but when you have cancer, you have so little control over what it's doing inside you that I really think it's helpful to have at least this one small thing that is in your power.
Anyway, Happy New Year, everyone!
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