My tapestry-filled healing palace now harbors a Lion and a Unicorn

The past couple of days have brought some conflict into my tapestry-filled healing palace.  This is for several GOOD reasons, I think.  The conflicts have conjured the Mother Goose nursery rhyme The Lion and the Unicorn into my head:

The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown. The Lion beat the Unicorn all around the town.  Some gave them white bread, some gave them brown.  Some gave them plum cake and drummed them out of town. 

The conflict is between my body (let's say my body is the Lion) and my brain (the Unicorn, clearly).  My body has been craving more movement, which is AWESOME, but my brain wants to sit with eyes closed.  I am doing my best to find the right balance, and give both the Lion and the Unicorn what they need in the present moment, but "balance" feels a bit like "versus" these past few days and sometimes it's just dang hard.  Drumming them both out of town sounds mighty good to me right now!  Fortunately I also need to make time for digesting and hydrating (that's what I'm doing right now), so I get to work on a little blogging here and there (I have a non-cancer post that I've been working on for a few days that's almost finished!  Fun creative activity for the hbomb!).  And I'm really good at typing so I can actually type this with my eyes closed half the time.  I just typed that whole sentence, and now this one, with my eyes closed.  Huzzah!   

From whence did this conflict arise?  I have hypotheses:

1)  On Tuesday I dropped down to 1 steroid pill per day, because I had a couple of days with what seemed to me to be near-zero brain pressure.  So, I just take one 'roid at dinner now.  This has yielded a noteworthy increase in head pressure, for which the best relief is sitting or lying down with my eyes closed.  An ice pack on my face feels good, too.  I see Dr. Oncologist tomorrow--maybe I am being too aggressive with the steroid step-down and need to add a half a pill at breakfast?  I'll ask.  It's likely that this is just the process and I'm dealing with it appropriately. 

2)  On three of this week's four days, I have had two walks per day, huzzah!  I still did my 1-mile Leslie Sansone living room walk each day, and at a different point in the day I added a short walk in the neighborhood with a buddy.  Trekking beyond my tapestry-filled healing palace out into the healing garden of the real world is lovely for my mind and my body, but this additional exercise is likely a factor in my Lion and Unicorn conflict, right?  How can it not be?  One other physical achievement is that when doing my daily yoga routine, I now hold the down dog position for one full minute.  Huzzah!  I still can't go up stairs without the help of my arms and a railing, though.  But I'm stronger each day. 

So, I spend my entire day trying to resolve this conflict.  Move, rest, move, rest, move, rest.  Yesterday my brother called me at about noon, right after I had completed my Leslie walk but before I had completed the cool-down and stretch.  He was like, are you busy?  And I was like yes, yes I am.  I had to laugh at myself.  I just put him on speakerphone and kept doing my stuff.  Sitting time was over, I couldn't just sit and talk on the phone!  It was time to stretch and make lunch!

Let's see, I had at least two more things to say.  What were they?  Oh yes, one item is that my mom, H, has pointed out that Lloyd needs to be renamed.  Lloyd doesn't exist anymore.  We irradiated him, and my body has been working very hard to extricate his carcass without damaging my basal ganglia or other adjacent brain tissue and without causing any seizures or trouble swallowing or seeing.  Thank you, body, for doing such a good job so far!  I appreciate you!!!  Mom has suggested the name Pearl, and I think that that's a good name for it.  In oysters, pearl formation starts from an irritant getting into the oyster; Lloyd was definitely an irritant in my brain oyster!  The oyster then coats the irritant with a pearl sac and nacre, slowly turning it into a pearl.

Next Friday, Feb. 23, is the first day we get to evaluate Lloyd's transition to Pearl.  I have both a brain MRI and an appointment with Dr. Radiation Oncologist.  So stay tuned for those results!  I'm super curious to see how things are going in there.

Yesterday was Valentine's Day, and I had previously blogged about a recovery goal to have a date with the spouse.  Goal achieved!  We had to make some changes to our plans, because our original reservation was at a restaurant with a fixed-price 5-course chef's tasting menu with wine pairings, but with my current dietary restrictions and lack of alcohol consumption this didn't make sense anymore.  So I moved our reservation to our favorite and fancy Thai restaurant downtown where I ate yellow curry with tofu and potatoes and rice, and an enormous fancy chocolate lava cake.  The spouse's dinner was delicious, too.  Clearly I was smitten by this cake, I'm swooning quite dorkily in this video. Our daughters would have LOVED to experience this cake; I felt a little bit guilty eating it without them.  Our server said that they only serve this dessert on Valentine's day, though.  Next year maybe we'll take the girls out for a Valentine's dessert.  That would be fun.  Huzzah for going out, huzzah for eating out, huzzah for the spouse, huzzah for the MIL for childcare!  I love you, babe!  I love you, MIL!  

 

Oh, and the chocolate mayonnaise cake that we made for the spouse's birthday was delicious too!  I highly recommend that recipe! 

Naptime!