Learning to Live
Living with cancer can be difficult. Everything is fragile, life, people, love, etc.
After being diagnosed the art of living life takes on new meaning.
Find people who will love you through it. I was blessed because they found me.
I have a small child so I had to draw on everything I knew to be able to great each day. This meant to maintain my vigorous work out schedule. I did Zumba the entire time I was in treatment. I would literally leave Zumba and go to radiation treatment. I had them schedule the appointments around my classes. I would not recommend this to everyone. I was able to do this because I exercised for 2 hours a day before my diagnosis. I made my instructor aware of my condition and proceeded as if I were normal. I was far from normal. Every day was a struggle but I kept pushing on.
Cancer treatment changes your appearance. This makes it difficult to look as you did before cancer. Many people were wigs during chemo. I wore a scarf to cover my baldness. However, my 2nd chemo drug caused my eyebrows, eyelashes, and body hair to fall. My nails also turned a purple/black color. It is sad that the color is darker on darker skinned people. The chemo fingers and toes are not as noticeable on Caucasians and people with lighter skin. My nail technician would used dark thick colors to cover my nails.
As your nails grow the dark color will go away. But it takes time. My nails are at their darkest in the large photo. In the other photo of my hands it has been about 2 months. It is a noticeable difference. I found these fingers to be the most visible identifier of my treatment. After treatment was over I realized that numbness and tingling sensation in my fingers and toes would not go away. The doctors prescribed Gabapentin. This drug comes with a host of side effects but does help the tinging and numbness.
I found these chemo fingers to be the most obvious identifier of my condition. I can wear a scarf on my head and no one thinks about it. But, why on earth would I have purple/black fingernails. They took several months to go away after chemotherapy. I did start to take vitamins and supplements to speed up the process of retiring my physical appearance to normal.
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