I feel like I’m finally coming up for air. I’m starting to get my energy back. I didn’t realize how much energy I didn’t have until I started to feel better. Now I’m still hesitant because I’m not sure how long this feeling better will last.

My oncologist agreed that I could delay my hormone therapy for a month or so. I’m also off of the first round AI for six months. We’ll see if that is what was making me feel so fatigued. I’m cautiously optimistic. My primary care doctors office (another doctor on the team) has referred me to a neurologist. His comment was that if the brain is OK and you still get headaches then the next step is to look at ways in which to control the headaches. He figured talking to a neurologist about hormone therapy might give me some insights into ways in which I can help my body cope with the low levels of estrogen.

I already have a ridiculous number of doctors on my care team – I’m also adding a new dermatologist to help treat my dermatitis herpetiformus (DH – crazy itchy rashes caused by celiac disease). After my last exposure while I was traveling a couple weeks ago, my rashes got bad enough that I reached out to my dermatologist asking for new medications to help control them, and he has referred me to another dermatologist that specializes in that area. The subspecialities are a bit crazy. Do I really need three different dermatologists?

Coming up for air also means that I’m exercising more which is one way to fight off the effects of fatigue. I’m swimming, hiking, and now biking. My swims go for about 45 minutes, with the hope of getting back to an hour. What usually stops me is muscle cramps. I’m not quite back up to swimming a mile but I’m getting there. When I walk or hike it is about 6-7 km. And I successfully changed the tire on my road bike, so I was back on it this week. I road almost 18km. My arm/shoulder wasn’t completely happy with the bike ride, but that in part is because it has been a long time since I’ve ridden that bike. I’m happy to be back on it, and hope to ride it a lot more in the coming weeks. I was hoping to do a short sprint triathlon at my gym, but they ended up cancelling it. So, I’ll stick to my weekly triathlon, getting back into exercising for 2-3 hours per day with one sport per day.

Feature image CC0 Licence downloaded from Pixabay.