Six Months On

Two CEA tests since my last reported here.  Both have been 1.5 so I continue to show No Evidence of Disease!

Theoretically I am right in the middle of the most likely time to recur, but as always I have no idea how cancer will or will not affect me in the future, nor can I do anything about it.  Right now it does not affect us, although the impact of my treatment remains, I still suffer from Cancer Fatigue (need a rest in the afternoon) and still have tingling and numbness in my feet and at times in my fingers.  Both hands and feet remain very sensitive to heat and cold.  I also have problems with multi-tasking and get very uncomfortable and even nauseous in intense meetings at work.

I have been a bit challenged in terms of my attitude to work and retirement.  This really started during the hard part of my chemo when I was fairly sure I would not survive for much longer, and got quite upset that I would not be enjoying any retirement.  I have moved on from there, but then started to get concerned about retirement plans and what I would actually do.  It seemed the right thing to carefully plan for retirement and how I would spend my time.

Recently I have thought a bit about my life, which has been pretty amazing, and how I got to here.  Very little of my past life, work and play has been well thought out in advance.  I have generally lived for now and grabbed opportunity as it went past.  This has served me well to date so I see no need to change, I am now quite excited about finding out what my life after work will be like, but I have no strong plans, and don't really know if it will happen this year, next year, or later.

So things have really been going pretty well.  Cancer treatment is now not part of our lives, the illness is rarely considered and only the after affects of treatment are a nuisance, but nothing considered to what many people have to live with.