Now that a recent health crisis has brlown through my life like a storm I'm left to analyze it. I'm still a long way from full recovery. In fact, my strength has been very slow to return. The side effects of the chemo are gone, but I'm left with the worst cold I've ever dealt with. It's certainly slowed my progress getting over the chemo.
Comparing my bout with cancer to the kidney failure, it ends up looking like a tornado, while both my experiences with kidney failurer were like hurricanes--slow moving with lots of advance warning.
No so with the cancer. It was here with no warning and little time to prepare and look for shelter. It was also more intense, with more damage and destruction crammed into a shorter duration.
My first experience with kidney failure and dialysis lasted exactly one year. There was the same amount of misery, but spread out over a much longer period of time, just like a slow, plodding hurricane. The recovery period afterward was slow, just as this recovery appears to be turning out.
The second kidney failure required me to do hemodialysis, which is more miserable than the peritoneal, the the kind I did the first time. It lasted six months and was the same level of discomfort squeezed into half the amount of time.
The chemotherapy lasted nine weeks. That's quite a bit of unhappy discomfort squeezed into a fairly short, intense experience.
It's been over for three weeks and I'm still looking around at the mess, trying to figure out where ot start. I guess I still have that "thousand yerd stare" people get just after a disaster. This thing has swept in from nowhere, done more damage than I can calculate, and here I am, waiting for The Salvation Army.
