Physically I have always been pretty active. Throughout my life I have either been in athletics or doing something active like softball leagues, basketball leagues, work out at gym or work in the yard. I am not a nut about it but I love to play sports and keep my yard up. In the early summer of 2006 this all changed. I was diagnosed with leukemia and immediately began chemo treatments and eventually a bone marrow transplant. I was in remission for about a year and in October of 2007 the leukemia returned. I have since had a second bone marrow transplant (non related) and am in remission again. During this time there are things you cannot do for 6 months, a year, and two years physically.
Recently I have been feeling really well physically. I have been keeping the house up, cooking dinner, playing with the kids, and making it to all of their sporting events. In addition to that when I go to the doctors I have been taking the stairs instead of the elevator to try to build the strength up in my legs. I have really enjoyed being productive. My wife has been having to do EVERYTHING and in her spare time do her job because I was doing all I could to be awake and not sick.
The problem I am having is weird things are happening that have never happened before. I will be preparing dinner or cutting food up for my kids and I will get violent pains that shoot across my hands. It feels like my hand just cramps up and I can't move my fingers. This has been happening for about two months off and on. I will get leg cramps in the middle of the night that wake me up. Tonight as a matter of fact I got one in my calf and I reached down and I could feel a hard ball on the side of my calf. Finally, my knees...holy cow I don't what is going on there. The other night I was walking to the bathroom and my right knee just went out. The only reason I did not fall down was because I grabbed on to the bed. Temporarily I could put no weight on my knee and Tracey had to help me to the bathroom. After about 10 minutes of throbbing it went away and I was able to walk fine. Tonight both knees are throbbing. I can feel my heartbeat in my knees. Sitting up seems to help so that is why I am up at two thirty in the morning blogging.
I was talking to my dad about this yesterday telling him I was going to talk to the doctors about my medicine because clearly it was messing with my body. All of these symptoms must be side effects of the drugs I am on I thought. My dad pointed out that clearly I was on a lot of medicine but he also pointed out that I am approaching 40 years old (I will be 37 next month) and stuff like what I am dealing with starts happening. Clearly after what my body has been through the past two years (two bone marrow transplants and one operation) I am sure if you did one of those test to see how old your body is physically it has probably aged 10 years in 2.
I am going to have to take a couple of days and just rest and get my legs back. Once that happens I am going to really monitor my physical activity and see where this goes. My best friend in the whole world recently had some health issues and he is doing fine but I have noticed our conversations sometimes tend to go in the direction of what ailment we are dealing with. Then it hit me. I am getting older.
My dad is right. It probably is just time for "stuff" to start happening. I know once I get over all of this I will eventually be able to return to doing some things I used to like my lawn and working out at the club but I think that maybe I might have to officially retire from the recreation basketball and softball leagues and concentrate on improving my golf. THAT I can start playing again in about 5 months.
I might be falling apart a little but I will put this thing back together and move on.
No comments:
Post a Comment