This has been a frenetic weekend. I wasn’t sure how my energy would hold up, given what we had planned, but now that the craziness is over and I’m back home with my feet up, I can tell you that I was… perfectly normal!

This is week 3 of my 4th cycle of chemo. That means that my immune system and blood values are probably all at the absolute nadir – they have been trashed by the chemo drugs and now need to rebound in time for my next treatment in 4 days time. Despite that, I feel perfectly normal. My energy level feels about the same as it would have been a year ago, before any of this stuff started.

The craziness started with driving off to Indiana on Friday morning to help my brother move back to Canada. Helping took the form of renting the biggest UHaul truck available and packing him up ourselves. By doing this, we could save him thousands of dollars. And the timing worked well with my chemo schedule, so we decided to do it.

I drove 3.5 hours to Sarnia, then we picked up my brother from his hotel (so that his car would remain in Canada), and crossed the border and drove another 3.5 hours to his home in Indiana. On Saturday, we picked up the truck and spent about 4 hours packing it with hundreds of boxes, bins and bags, plus furniture and the contents of a double garage. I carried boxes up the ramp into the truck and moved constantly for most of that time.

By 2:30 pm, we were packed and decided to hit the road and get partway home. That meant that I drove my car, alone, for the 3.5 hours back to the border, while husband and brother drove the truck. By 7 pm, we were over the border and safely in our hotel. It had started snowing and we decided that dinner in the hotel restaurant would be just fine. No more driving for us…

I had a fabulous keto dinner of prosciutto-wrapped, Boursin cheese-stuffed chicken breast on a bed of beautiful freshly steamed veggies with balsamic dribbled over them. I declined the mashed potatoes and got extra veg.

I have eaten in restaurants seven times in the last 4 days and every meal has been a keto-compliant, if maybe a bit high protein. Omelettes, chicken ceasar salad, Japanese shrimp and veggies, steak, bunless burgers, and the above mentioned chicken. Car food snacks included pepperettes, cheese curds and pork rinds. It’s been surprisingly easy.

Today, we drove the last 3.5 hours to bring my brother to his new home, (I drove alone in my car again), then proceeded to unpack the entire truck into his house and garage. My job was to meet the workers at the door and carry the stuff in that was coming into the house (due to the fresh snow that had fallen overnight – yuck!). Not a huge amount of work, but enough after the long drive in blowing and drifting snow. We started our day at 7:30 am and finally got finished and home about 4 pm. Then I proceeded to make meatloaf and baked yams for supper, because I wanted a nice meal to celebrate my brother’s successful move to Canada and meatloaf is total comfort food for us.

I am not exhausted, I am not feeling in the least unwell. The two weeks between chemo infusions are a time of being almost my normal self. That has been a gift of this approach to chemotherapy. In fact, instead of starting to fade under the cumulative effects of the accumulating treatments, I feel like each one has been a bit lighter than the one before. I’m starting to look ahead to a time after chemo, when I can start really working at regaining my strength and endurance, get exercising again and pick back up some of the threads of my life that I had to release to make room for cancer. The end is in sight…